He was lost—anyone could see that—but she had no idea how entirely lost he was nor why! Half of Jupiter's great disk and most of the other moons were below the horizon when the man stepped out of the plane and changed her life. As far as Carol Marsh was concerned, he was ordinary enough in appearance. And she wasn't ordinarily attracted to ordinary men. He was slightly over medium height, his features were not quite regular, and he had a deep tan over what had started out as a sunburn, so that she decided he had misjudged the strength of the sun on some planet with a thin atmosphere. She frowned as she watched him look around. She was annoyed by the fact that it took him almost a minute to get his bearings and realize that she was first, a human being and second, a girl well worth...
There were two varieties of aliens—blue and bluer—but not as blue as the Earthmen! Even if I'm only a space pilot, I'm not dumb. I mean I'm not that dumb. I admit that Dr. Ellik and Dr. Chon outrank me, because that's the way it's got to be. A pilot is only an expendable part. But I had been the first one to see the natives on this planet, and I was the first one to point out that they came in two attractive shades of blue, light blue and dark blue. Four Indigos were carrying an Azure. I called the others over to the screen. "A sedan chair," identified Lee Chon. "Think the light-skinned one is a kind of a priest?" Mike Ellik shook his head. "I doubt it. The chair isn't ornate enough. I think that's probably the standard method of travel—at least for a certain social elite."...
Illustrated by EMSH Overture—Adagio Misterioso THE NEUROSURGEON peeled the thin surgical gloves from his hands as the nurse blotted the perspiration from his forehead for the last time after the long, grueling hours. "They're waiting outside for you, Doctor," she said quietly. The neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were still finishing up the operation, attending to the little finishing touches that did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist. Such things as suturing up a scalp, and applying bandages. The nurse took the sterile mask—no longer sterile now—while the doctor washed and dried his hands. "Where are they?" he asked finally. "Out in the hall, I suppose?" She nodded. "You'll probably have to push them out of the way to get out of Surgery." HER PREDICTION was almost perfect. The group of men in conservative business suits, wearing conservative ties, and holding conservative, soft, felt hats in...
The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her footstool. Dear blowzy old bitch-planet, swollen and pale and cold, mad with your Shakespearean moons, white-mottled as death from Venerean Plague, spinning on your side like a poisoned pregnant cockroach, rolling around the sun like a fat drunken floozie with green hair rolling on the black floor of an infinite bar-room, what a sweet last view of the Solar System you are for a cleancut young spaceman.... Grunfeld chopped off that train of thought short. He was young and the First Interstellar War had snatched him up and now it was going to pitch him and twenty other Joes out of the System on a fast curve breaking around Uranus—and so what! He shivered to get a...
"Going to the circus?" the man with the sallow complexion asked. Kevin nodded but didn't look at his questioner. He nervously brushed back the lock of gray hair from his lined forehead and pushed his rimless glasses into a more secure position on his nose. His worried expression made him look older than his forty-eight years. "Hear it's better than ever," the man continued in a flat toneless voice. " The Great Golden Ball is supposed to be really something. Or so they say. I go every year. It's really amazing what they can do nowadays—science, I mean. Even the circus is better for it." Is it? thought Kevin as the speeding, robot driven monorail transport rocketed past the brilliant pastel buildings shining slimly in the sunlight filtering through the plastic dome covering New New York. Oh, is it? The man next to Kevin, discouraged by the lack of response...
The school of St. Margaret's Hospital was fortunate in its lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, as it is sometimes described. At some schools the lecturer on this subject is appointed apparently for the reason that he lacks the qualifications to lecture on any other. But with us it was very different: John Thorndyke was not only an enthusiast, a man of profound learning and great reputation, but he was an exceptional teacher, lively and fascinating in style and of endless resources. Every remarkable case that had ever been recorded he appeared to have at his fingers' ends; every fact—chemical, physical, biological, or even historical—that could in any way be twisted into a medico-legal significance, was pressed into his service; and his own varied and curious experiences seemed as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. One of his favourite devices for giving life and interest to a rather dry subject...
The old robot was one of the few remaining hand-made productions of the Rotulian era—an era which had seen each individually constructed robot reach the zenith in the various professional fields. An era totally unlike present-day Cornusia and its slip-shod electro-assembly line robotic productions. And indeed slip-shod were these productions, many Cornusians agreed. Loudly and indignantly they howled that the stupid Cornusian robots, conspicuous by their dress (multicolored sport coats, striped trousers, curling shoes and brightly feathered hats) did nothing but prance around all day and engage in horseplay. Not so the old robot.... From that long-ago day when his final bolts had been lovingly tightened by grimy machinists and tabac-chewing electronicians, he had been fabulous. Even the Rotulian elders, accustomed as they were to robotic achievements, had been stunned by his rapid rise in the fields of finance and economics. And even the irascible bearded banker, Tesmit Lowndes, after...
One big name per story is usually considered to be sufficient. So when two of them appear in one by-line, it can certainly be called a scoop; so that's what we'll call it. H. L. Gold and science-fiction go together like a blonde and a henna rinse. Robert Krepps is also big time. You may know him also under his other label—Geoff St. Reynard, but a Krepps by any name can write as well. The roller coaster's string of cars, looking shopworn in their flaky blue and orange paint, crept toward the top of the incline, the ratcheted lift chain clanking with weary patience. In the front seat, a young couple held hands and prepared to scream. Two cars back, a heavy, round-shouldered, black-mustached man with a swarthy skin clenched his hands on the rail before him. A thin blond fellow with a briefcase on his lap glanced back and...
ILLUSTRATOR MARTINEZ The problem of separating the friends from the enemies was a major one in the conquest of space as many a dead spacer could have testified. A tough job when you could see an alien and judge appearances; far tougher when they were only whispers on the wind. A smile of friendship is a baring of the teeth. So is a snarl of menace. It can be fatal to mistake the latter for the former. Harm an alien being only under circumstances of self-defense. TRUST NO ALIEN BEING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. —From Exploration Ship's Handbook . He listened in the silence of the Exploration ship's control room. He heard nothing but that was what bothered him; an ominous quiet when there should have been a multitude of sounds from the nearby village for the viewscreen's audio-pickups to transmit. And it was more than six hours past the time...
All the way over, all through the loneliness of the long trip, he had consoled himself with the thought of the reception he would get. How they would crowd around him, how they would gape and cheer! All the most prominent and most important Earthlings would rush to see him, to touch their own appendages to his tentacles, to receive his report of interplanetary good will. His arrival would certainly be the most celebrated occasion in all the history of Earth.... He was coming in for a landing, and it was no time for day-dreaming. He brought the ship down slowly, in the middle of a large square, as carefully as if he were settling down among his own people. He gave them a chance to get out from under him before making contact with the ground. When the ship finally rested firmly on the strange planet, he gave a...
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is famous—so it is said; and perhaps unconsciously, Mark Brendon shared that opinion. His self-esteem was not, however, conspicuous, although he held that only a second-rate man is diffident. At thirty-five years of age he already stood high in the criminal investigation department of the police. He was indeed about to receive an inspectorship, well earned by those qualities of imagination and intuition which, added to the necessary endowment of courage, resource, and industry, had created his present solid success. A substantial record already stood behind him, and during the war certain international achievements were added to his credit. He felt complete assurance that in ten years he would retire from government employ and open that private and personal practice which it was his ambition to establish. And now Mark was taking holiday on Dartmoor, devoting himself to his hobby...
SHE was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, full of life and hope, and all set to conquer the world. Colin Fraser happened to be on vacation on Cape Cod, where she was playing summer stock, and went to more shows than he had planned. It wasn't hard to get an introduction, and before long he and Judy Sanders were seeing a lot of each other. "Of course," she told him one afternoon on the beach, "my real name is Harkness." He raised his arm, letting the sand run through his fingers. The beach was big and dazzling white around them, the sea galloped in with a steady roar, and a gull rode the breeze overhead. "What was wrong with it?" he asked. "For a professional monicker, I mean." She laughed and shook the long hair back over her shoulders. "I wanted to live under the name of Sanders,"...
I was wandering among the tall grass of the slopes, listening to the soft whistling of the wind; allowing the grass to caress my toga and thighs. It was a day soft and clear; a day accepted by the young, cherished by we old. Across the gently undulating hills stood the magnificent Melopolis, encradling the Oracle of Delni. I do not, of course, believe in the gods per se; still there is a grandeur in the very stones that transcends their human sculptors, and it is no wonder to me that many cling tenaciously, and ignorantly, to the old religion. Cling to the gods of old, who drew man upward from wherever he began. In whose names Man killed and plundered, while struggling up. In whose names Man finally left this earth, to seek his cousins among the stars. But of course there were no cousins. There was nothing. And...
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Now in the nooning, with the sun high overhead and the shadows huddling dispiritedly at their sides, the threat that existed in this wild desert was completely invisible. The girl, Nora Martin, said, "What I don't understand is why we were so stupid as to come here in the first place. We could have stayed on Earth and had homes and families." Becoming conscious of what she had said, she hastily corrected herself. "I mean, each of us could have had a home and a family." Pike McLean shifted the muzzle of the Rangeley just a trifle, adjusting it so that the cross hairs in the periscope sight covered the exact spot where he expected, and hoped, the next native would appear. He...
Jord awoke to the purr of the ventilators billowing the heavy curtains at the doorway. Through them, from the corridor, seeped the cold, realistic, shadowless light that seemed to sap the color from man and matter and leave only drabness and emptiness. His eyes were sandy with sleep. He blinked. The optic nerves readied for sight, pupils focused, retina recorded. The primordial fear of unfamiliar things disappeared as he recognized the objects in the room, identified waking as a natural phenomenon and remembered the day's objectives. He lay quietly on the pallet; dimly conscious of identity, clinging physically to the temporal death vanishing behind his opened eyes. Pale light, swollen bladder, sticky throat, quiescent body, unimportant hunger, dim fear of incipient living. He felt for the cigarettes on the floor beside his bed. His careful, sleepy fingers passed lightly over the ashy ashtray and fell on wrinkled cellophane. Dry tubes...
I bought the typewriter in a pawn shop on Third Avenue. The pawn shop proprietor was a balding old man with a walrus mustache. " How much?" I asked him. "Five dollars," he said casually. I glanced at him skeptically. The machine was a Remington Noiseless, with italics, probably worth a little over a hundred new, and it couldn't have been more than a year or two old. " How much?" I asked. "Five dollars, is what I said. Five." He held up the fingers of his widespread hand. "Five. One-two-three...." "What's wrong with it?" I asked suspiciously. The old man shrugged. "Something has to be wrong with it? Listen, young man, don't look a gift horse in the mouth." "How come it's so cheap?" The old man sighed deeply. "You try to do a favor, you get all kinds of questions. Would you feel happier if I charged you...
When the Martians had built the village of Kinkaaka there had been water in the canal, a cool, level sweep of green water from the northern icecap. Now there was none, and Kinkaaka clung to the upper swell of the bank and curved its staggered residential terraces like tragic brows over the long slope of sand and clay, the dead wall baked criss-cross by the sun, that bore at its deep juncture with the opposite bank the pitiful, straggling trench cut by Mars' last moving waters an untold time ago. Kinkaaka's other side, away from the canal, was coated rust-red by the desert winds that came with sunset. Here were the crumbling market arenas of the ancient traders, the great mounds of underground warehouses long empty; and here now, with Mars' conquest, was the "native" section into whose sandstone huts the village's few inhabitants were shoved firmly, but not brutally,...
Here's what happens when two Master Spies tangle ... and stay that way! "Nothing, nothing to get upset about," Pashkov said soothingly, taking his friend's arm as they came out of the villa forty miles from Moscow. Pashkov looked like a roly-poly zoo attendant leading a tame bear. "Erase his memory, give him a new name and feed him more patriotism. Very simple." Medvedev raised his hand threateningly. "Don't come howling to me if everybody guesses he is nothing but a robot." Pashkov glanced back at the house. Since the publication of Dentist Amigovitch , this house had become known all over the world as Boris Knackenpast's villa. Now the house was guarded by a company of soldiers to keep visitors out. From an open window Pashkov heard the clicking of a typewriter. "It's when they're not like robots that everybody suspects them," he said, climbing into his flier. "Petchareff...
With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from London came to a standstill in the station at Detton Magna. An elderly porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged aid of one bound by custom to perform a hopeless mission, from the small, redbrick lamp room. The station master, occupying a position of vantage in front of the shed which enclosed the booking office, looked up and down the lifeless row of closed and streaming windows, with an expectancy dulled by daily disappointment, for the passengers who seldom alighted. On this occasion no records were broken. A solitary young man stepped out on to the wet and flinty platform, handed over the half of a third-class return ticket from London, passed through the two open doors and commenced to...
I suppose that in the days before the catastrophe I was a very fair representative of the better type of business man. I had been successful in my own line, which was the application of mass-production methods to a better pattern of motor-car than had yet been dealt with upon a large scale; and the Flint car had been a good speculation. I was thinking of bringing out an economical type of gyroscopic two-wheeler just at the time we were overwhelmed. Organisation was my strong point; and much of my commercial success was due to a new system of control which I had introduced into my factories. I mention this point in passing, because it was this capacity of mine which first brought me to the notice of Nordenholt. Although at the time of which I speak I had become more a director than a designer, I was originally by...
"Mr. Venner, sir?" "Mr. Venner—yes, certainly. You will find him in his private office—that way, sir. The door to the right. Venner is in his private office, Joseph, is he not?" "I don't think so, Mr. Garside, unless he has just returned. I saw him go out some time ago." "Is that so? Wait a moment, young man." The young man halted, and then turned back to face Mr. Garside, with an inquiring look in his frank, brown eyes. "Not here, sir, do I understand?" he asked, politely. Mr. Garside shook his head. He was a tall, slender man of forty, and was the junior partner of the firm of Rufus Venner & Co., a large retail jewelry house in New York City, with a handsome store on Fifth Avenue, not far from Madison Square. It was in their store that this introductory scene occurred, and proved to be the...
Let him go. It's quite safe to leave us. I want to talk to him. Sit over there, Chris, where you can be comfortable. A paradox, isn't it? You were taught we may never go back. Now I've authorized the building of the rocket. From your point of view you were justified in trying to destroy it. I'm violating the regulations; you weren't. But time changes the shape of the truth, Chris; it isn't static. No one had the insight, then, to grasp the insanity of John Firth's dream. People hated Firth or envied him; but no one called him mad. John Firth was an industrialist; yet far more than that, too—politician, scientist, financier, even an artist of sorts. There was nothing he couldn't do; and few things he didn't do superbly well. That accounts for his philosophy. He never understood his own superiority. He honestly believed that all men...
It did Col. Hal Gascoigne no good whatsoever to know that he was the only man aboard Satellite Vehicle 1. No good at all. He had stopped reminding himself of the fact some time back. And now, as he sat sweating in the perfectly balanced air in front of the bombardier board, one of the men spoke to him again: "Colonel, sir—" Gascoigne swung around in the seat, and the sergeant—Gascoigne could almost remember the man's name—threw him a snappy Air Force salute. "Well?" "Bomb one is primed, sir. Your orders?" "My orders?" Gascoigne said wonderingly. But the man was already gone. Gascoigne couldn't actually see the sergeant leave the control cabin, but he was no longer in it. While he tried to remember, another voice rang in the cabin, as flat and razzy as all voices sound on an intercom. "Radar room. On target." A regular, meaningless peeping. The...
The trouble started when the Arcturus Queen was four billion miles out of Earth, heading for the star after which it was named. It pulled clear of the solar system using conventional drive, then switched into subspace. A few minutes later the ship shuddered perceptibly, and an authoritative voice came reassuringly from the public address system. "Passengers will please remain in their seats. We are temporarily cutting the subspace drive due to mechanical difficulties which have developed. There is no cause for alarm." The message was repeated and George said, "What do you suppose is the matter?" "How should I know," Silvia snapped. "I'm not a space mechanic. Why don't you find out if you're so interested." He glared at her. "I was just wondering. You don't have to get so disagreeable. But then, why should now be any different?" She smiled at that, though her blood raced and her...
Jon Akars, petty officer of the Sun Line freighter Cinnabar , backed away from the jimmied manifold of the air circulators and hastily felt for the emergency mask at his belt. Any moment now the Venusian kui-knor he had filched from the ship's medicine cabinet and dropped into the circulators would take effect. Without warning men would drop at their posts, apparently insensible, rigid of muscle, eyes staring fixedly. Actually, they would be keenly aware of everything about them, their senses sharpened rather than dulled by the drug. But it was no part of Akars' plans to be one of them. He strapped on the mask, and, at the sound of approaching footsteps, shrank back into the shadows of the machines. An officer peered into the circulator chamber for an instant, then marched on down the corridor. Akars chuckled. Box Jordan was part of his plan; in a way, he...
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself! It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over...
They got the great silver ship's hatches pried open, finally, and dragged Shane out by his heels. They dumped him on his face in the gravel and cinders of the ramp like a pole-axed huecco . He wasn't a particularly big man, as men came out here in the spaceways. But there was a spare, hard quality to his close-knit body, and the old scars that marked him told of forgotten battles, bitter fights to the death with no quarter asked or given. Strange suns had burnt him dark as a Malya . Mercury's blazing sands, the high deserts of Mars, had dulled the crisp brown of his hair. Faint bluish pockmarks along his left cheek bespoke Pluto and the ice-things that dwelt there. And the Chonya belt still girded his waist; the great iron belt of the asteroids, one link for every chief who'd vowed fealty, eternal symbol of...
" O, là, là! See, then, the best of good luck for each one of us this year!" Although Mère Pitou's rotund body, like Falstaff's, was fat and scant o' breath, and the Pilgrims' Way was steep and rocky, some reserve of energy enabled her to clap her hands and scream the tidings of high fortune when the notes of a deep-toned bell pealed from an alp still hidden among the trees. Three girls, fifty paces higher up the path, halted when they heard that glad cry—and, indeed, who would not give ear to such augury? "Why should the clang of a bell foretell good luck, Mother?" cried Barbe, the youngest, seventeen that September day, and a true Breton maid, with eyes like sloes, and cheeks the tint of ripe russet apples, and full red lips ever ready to smile shyly, revealing the big, white, even teeth of a peasant....
"Moon in 14° Pisces," said the little perforated card. Henderson stepped back from the computer and scratched his hairy head. Nonsense again. He threw the card in the wastebasket and repeated his directions on another: "One hundred fifty cancer susceptible mice were injected in the pectoral region with 1/cc of aromatic compound A. One hundred fifty identical control mice were injected with isotonic saline, B. Eight in group A developed sarcomas at the point of injection, Group B developed none. Test the null hypothesis at 5% level of statistical significance." The computer accepted Henderson's second offering, chewed it into acceptable code, swallowed it, and burped. Henderson watched suspiciously as red and green blinkers went on and off and a contented humming noise came from the machine's bowels. After a while the card emerged from another opening—which orifice had been thoughtfully placed at the appropriate end of the machine, anatomically speaking;...