[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories November 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] That first trip to the moon has been the subject of many stories. Mr. Vandenburg has come up with as novel a twist as we've ever read. And it could happen. The Ajax XX was the first American space craft to make a successful landing on the moon. She had orbited the Earth's natural satellite for a day and a half before making history. The reason for orbiting was important. The Russians had been boasting for a number of years that they would be first. Captain Junius Robb, U.S.A.F., had orders to investigate before and after landing. The moon's dark side was explored, due to the unknown hazards involved, during the orbiting process. More thorough investigation was possible on the moon's familiar side....
Thompson poured himself a shot of rye and downed it in one quick movement. He then pulled out his tobacco pouch, filled his pipe and applied a flaming match to the bowl. He puffed clouds of fragrant smoke. He frowned deeply. It was a good frown because Thompson was an expert in the art of frowning. This particular frown was a frown of irritated exasperation, because Thompson was an author, and it was late at night, and he'd drunk a quarter of a fifth of rye and smoked eleven pipefuls of tobacco and played four LP records, and he still had no ideas. His head swam from the effects of the whisky, and the tobacco, and the records; but he persevered in his search for An Idea for a Story. He searched among his records for Le Coq d'Or and put it on the phonograph, at bass tone and loud...
To: The Director From: Tone Seng Froot, Investigator for galaxies of 9th Sector. Subject: Unique characteristic of life-form suggesting urgent action to rescind life charter to Element 6. Sir , May I draw your attention to an explosive potential in your early experimental series? This exists in an obscure solar system of nine planets in a minor galaxy on the outer perimeter of my territory where I call only at extended intervals. You will best recall the location in connection with the assignment of a Self-Awareness Charter to Element 6 in the chemical series—more specifically, the crystalline form of carbon , as it is called locally. I have not troubled you with my earlier surveys, since nothing critical occurred in the first billion years, but I had better bring you up to date. Of all 96 elements to which life has been separately assigned in various locations, carbon showed the...
His name was Mikel Skot. He was thirty-four, five-feet-ten and lean, with decent features and all his hair and quite nice brown eyes. But somehow he always seemed to give the impression of being of indeterminate age, and slightly dusty. He lived alone, he gravitated between his job and his lodgings, and since the age of fourteen he had never known a girl well enough to call her by her first name. For twelve years, ever since 2827, he had sold tickets at one of the windows of Time Travel Tours, Unlimited. If raises hadn't been automatic, he would never have had one, though he was punctual, faithful, honest, quick and accurate. Even the other ticket-sellers still called him Citizen Skot. He had never budged from his cozy era—even though, as an employee, he was entitled to take any tour he wished, on his semi-annual vacation, at no cost to...
He, Sam Conway, was back from Mars now. Back from red, ferric deserts no Earthly boot had ever touched before. Back from bitter cold and aching dryness. Back from dazzling yellow hazes of dust and suspended ice crystals. No more need to wear oxygen armor in a thin, ozone-tainted atmosphere now. Back from solitude, and the endless fight to keep alive out there. Back from the enigma of Martian civilization's extinction, uncounted ages ago.... Back, back, back.... Home, now! From the window Sam Conway could see a row of maples, orange and golden in the autumn warmth. Kids were playing football in the street. Sam's oxy-hydrogen rocket ship, blued and battered and burnt, was suspended for all time from massive girders in the Smithsonian Institution. But even that was far away from Bryton, here. It should have been finished, now—the adventure. Sam Conway should have relaxed. Even Ellen Varney was...
I stepped back out of the gutter and watched the tight clot of men disappear around the corner. They hadn't really been menacing, just had made it obvious they weren't going to break up. And that I had better get out of their way. I got. We were well trained. The neon of the bar across the street flickered redly on my uniform. I watched the slush trickle off my boots for a while, then made up my mind and headed into the bar. It was a mistake. New York had always been considered safe for us. Of course there were many parts of the country that were absolutely forbidden "for your own good" and others that were "highly dangerous" or at least "doubtful." But New York had always been a haven. The stares there had even been admiring sometimes, especially in the beginning. But things had changed. I had...
Channing wanted a planet. Had they sold him a pup? Ex-vector Commander Jim Channing strode purposefully to the reception desk of Planet Enterprises, Inc. "I want," he told the well-built blonde who was making an interested survey of his lean features, "to buy a planet." "Yes, sir." Her interest evaporated. She took a card from a filing cabinet and handed it to him. "If you will just fill this out." It was a simple questionnaire—type, location, size—and Channing's stylo moved rapidly over it. He hesitated only at the last, stark question, "How much are you prepared to pay?" Then he wrote neatly in the space provided "One hundred thousand credits." That was exactly the amount of his signing-off bonus. It also represented his total finances. The unimaginative minds that calculated the pay of a red-blooded space officer didn't take into account all the attractive ways of spending it that a...
They still talk of Braun, and the Fourth Intergalactic Survey. Other men before him had gone out into the far, dark places. Three previous expeditions had gone out and vanished completely. Then the Venture IV went out and out and out countless miles and light-years and whatever else it is—and out there in the lonely darkness something happened. Nobody knew exactly what happened, but there was a lot of guessing. Only one man came back. Braun. And there was talk.... Tending bar anywhere is better, they say, than an academic degree in psychology. Tending bar on one of the way stations to the stars you see people—most of them human—as they really are, and in all stages of emotion. You see them coming and going, and a few already gone. By little signs, you can tell a lot about them, and make a guess at what is wrong with the...
Mr. Bradbury was angry. Fog or no fog, the airlines should stay on schedule. Lack of planning, foresight, sense of responsibility—that was the trouble. He felt like cursing. "Damn!" said Mr. Bradbury. But a voice on the public address system announced that Flight Eighteen for Chicago was ready to leave. He raised his considerable bulk from the chair in the dimly lit waiting room of the airfield and checked his watch. No way to run a business. He shook his head and snorted indignantly. Such a snort is worthy of note. It was an utterance that could be made only by a corporation lawyer in the prime of life. It was a nasal explosion connoting wealth, confidence, and a singular lack of imagination. It was a snort fed on T-bone steaks, good Scotch whisky, and bicarbonate of soda. Mr. Bradbury peered myopically around the waiting room. A few minutes ago,...
"In the middle of the night," the man said to the landlady over a soft-boiled egg and a slice of toast. "Right under my window." He leaned forward. "You know how children talk to themselves?" "Was it the same voice you heard the first two nights?" Mrs. Tilton asked. "I'm not sure now about the first night. Might have been another voice that first night." "And now it was a child?" "Yes." Mrs. Tilton rose to get the coffee. "Are you quite sure?" "You don't think I'm imagining?" "We have no children," she said. "A neighbor's, no doubt." "There isn't a child in the whole village, Mr. Coat." "That's what puzzles me. Don't you think we ought to report it?" "I'll get your coffee," she said, and went into the kitchen. "I didn't actually see the child," he called to her. "But I'm sure I heard the voice." The woman...
If we were told to list a dozen writers whom we considered great science-fiction authors, we should certainly place the name of Stanton A. Coblentz high up in the list. When Coblentz writes a short story, it is excellent, but when he composes a novel, such as the present one, you will have to go far and wide to find a better story. We sincerely believe that "In Caverns Below" will go down in science-fiction history with the other novels of Stanton A. Coblentz and will be re-read by the ever-growing multitude of science-fiction fans during future decades. Here we find everything that distinguishes our author's work from all others—what more can we say? It is now five years since Philip Clay and I were given up by the world as lost, five years since we plunged into that appalling adventure from which, even today, we have barely begun to...
Sam Knox touched a button in the control room of the Wanderer , and the draperies slid back from her transparent nose. He stood a moment, a sturdy compact figure, gazing into the dark. "Look at them!" he said bitterly. "They hang there like stars." Before the Wanderer he could see the mining fleet at the edge of the Asteroid Belt, their identification lights twinkling out from the enshrouding ebon mantle of space. They might as well be stars, for all the progress he had made with them. He had been here a week, spreading his nets for asteroid fragments like the rest of them, and never a sign of his presence had they shown. They hung there, cold and aloof—almost suspicious, he would have thought, had they any reason to be suspicious. Not that they were unfriendly by nature, these men who spread their nets to trap the errant...
"Telegram, sir." "Who for?" "Dave Dashaway." "I'll take it." The messenger boy who had just entered the hangar of the great prize monoplane of the aero meet at Columbus, stared wonderingly about him while the man in charge of the place receipted for the telegram. The lad had never been in so queer a place before. He was a lively, active city boy, but the closest he had ever seen an airship was a distance away and five hundred feet up in the air. Now, with big wonder eyes he stared at the strange appearing machine. His fingers moved restlessly, like a street-urchin surveying an automobile and longing to blow its horn. The man in charge of the place attracted his attention, too. He had only one arm and limped when he walked. His face was scarred and he looked like a war veteran. The only battles this old warrior...
"What color's the sky?" "Still black as the place the devils throw their old razor blades." "We'll hear it when we hit air." "Pretty soon now?" "A few minutes yet." "Man! My foot's working off at the knee." "John awake? Hey, John, you awake?" "How could I sleep through this? Whad'ya want?" "Nothing." "What's she look like?" "Earth?" "Of course." "A blue beach-ball with a white halo 'round it." "What's below us?" "Part of Asia, I think. Lots of clouds.... I see India." "Man, it's hot in here!" "Hell, wait'll we hit air!" "We all awake? Anyone asleep say 'aye.'" "Aye." "No one's asleep. I heard four voices." "If anyone can sleep through this they've got my blessings. Woof! My neck." "You think you've got it bad; they've got me squeezed in with the camera equipment; I'm bent at the knees and again at the waist." "Ah, but after we...
"Cyber justice!" That's what the District Attorney had called it in his campaign speech last night. "Cyber justice!" Oh, hell! Judge Walhfred Anderson threw the morning fax paper on top of the law books he had been researching for the past two hours, and stomped angrily across his chamber to the door of the courtroom. But it was easier to throw away the paper than the image of the words: "—and, if re-elected, I pledge to do all in my power to help replace human inefficiency with Cyber justice in the courts of this county! "We've seen what other counties have done with Cyber judges. We've witnessed the effectiveness of cybernetic units in our own Appellate Division.... And I can promise you twice as many prosecutions at half the cost to the taxpayers ... with modern, streamlined Cyber justice!" Walhfred Anderson caught a glimpse of his reflection in the oval...
Joe Linger raised up on one elbow and stared at the door, frowning. "Who is it?" he called out. A muffled voice answered from beyond the cracked, peeling wood. "Package for Mr. Joseph Linger!" "Just a minute!" Joe laid his magazine aside, rolled to the edge of the bed, and pulled on his trousers. Rising, he poked his feet into frayed slippers and, walking to the door, swung it open. "Sign here, please!" A little, old man stood in the doorway. He held a large square package under one arm and extended the other, holding out a clipboard and pencil to Joe. He had a thatch of white hair and a red, wrinkled face with blue eyes and a scowl. He wore a loose, blue uniform with a cloth badge on his shallow chest, reading: Time Deliveries, Inc. Joe took the clipboard and pencil, scrawled his name and frowned with...
It was the day. The automobile with its three passengers moved slowly along the quiet morning street. There was no need for hurry. The boy's father was soberly recalling his own war experiences, wondering how similar Tom's would be. The mother was remembering vividly fragments of films, of facsimile reports, of forgotten conversations, envisioning her son cringing pathetically in a shallow foxhole as the penultimate weapon burst into grisly glory in the dark dawn sky. Tom's own thoughts were tense, but he managed to conceal his nervousness from his parents. "We're here, son," his father announced calmly, pulling the car up to the curb. "Dear, can't we drive around the block just once?" his mother asked, her voice almost a whisper. "We're early." "No, mom," Tom said crisply. He opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. "Want us to go in, son?" "No thanks, Dad." "But we want...
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home! Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura. Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning.... It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos, were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June...
It was the hour before dawn. In the middle of the night the big ship had landed on the new planet, the satellite of the sun Proxima. Now they sat in the dark waiting, and they talked. "I wish we hadn't killed them," Rossiter said softly. His profile was faintly visible against the diffused light of the stars. "It's a bad sign, a bad start for a new life." "They attacked us," Bernard answered quickly. "Two spears, against forty blasters and stun guns?" Rossiter laughed. "An attack! We should have met them with stunners at low charge. But McNess ordered us to blast. The woman and the baby stick in my craw." "All our nerves were on edge," Bernard answered thoughtfully. "I know I was afraid when we first stepped out of the ship. There was something terrifying about air, and space, and the sky. But you're right, of course....
Linton lay down his steel fork beside the massively solid transparency of the restaurant water glass. "Isn't that Rogers Snead at that table?" he heard himself say stupidly. Howell, the man across the table from him, looked embarrassed without looking. "Not at all. Somebody who looks like him. Twin brother. You know how it is. Snead's dead, don't you remember?" Linton remembered. Howell had to know that he would remember. What were they trying to pull on him? "The man who isn't Snead is leaving," Linton said, describing the scene over Howell's shoulder. "If that's Snead's brother, I might catch him to pay my respects." "No," Howell said, "I wouldn't do that." "Snead came to Greta's funeral. It's the least I could do." "I wouldn't. Probably no relation to Snead at all. Somebody who looks like him." "He's practically running," Linton said. "He almost ran out of the restaurant." "Who?...
He lay on the cot, listening to the breathing of the six men who shared apartment 2-B with him, and the panic fluttered deep in his stomach, threatening to break upward and out in a wild scream. He fought it by telling himself it was foolish for a man who had lived through the destruction of New York and eight months imprisonment to feel this way. He peered toward the window and tried to see the morning sun; not as a pale, shimmery fog but as the bright Spring yellow he knew it was. But the fog remained, no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes with saliva-wet fingers. It was as if he were seeing everything under water—a world of shimmery, hazy objects. The panic rose again. The Conquerors' beam had done its work well, and his chances of finding Adele before death found him, were now terribly...
Everyone knows the Moon is dead. Everyone is quite correct—now! On impact he'd had time to see Hatter's head jerk loose from the carefully weakened strap. As Hatter slumped unconscious he touched the hidden switch. A shock, then darkness. What first came to him out of the humming blackout mist was his own name: Marcusson. Al Marcusson, just turned sixteen that Saturday in June, that green-leafed day his father had called him out to the back yard. They had sat on discount-house furniture under the heavy maple, Al who wore jeans and sneakers and a resigned expression, his father who wore glasses, a sport shirt, slacks, eyelet shoes and a curious reckless smile, a smile that didn't belong in the picture. "Now you're sixteen, Al, there's something I have to tell you," his father had begun. "My father told me when I turned sixteen, and his father told him. First,...
Dr. Clayton's face was impassive as a marble mask when he turned to young Corelli. For a moment, the little group stood there in embarrassed silence in the classroom, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, feigning interest in the paperweights upon Clayton's desk, or in the utterly uninspiring scenes on the sidewalk outside the window. "You say, Corelli, that you saw three—er, Martian—ships. Can you describe them?" Corelli blinked as he felt the weight of his colleagues' eyes boring into him. "I didn't say they were Martian , sir—only that they seemed to be unearthly. And they were not the conventional saucer-shaped things—they acted like saucers skimming across the water. That's what made me think they were genuine. And they didn't seem to be going fast enough so that I'd expect to hear a roar like a jet-plane. "It struck me that this might not be the way...
It's not so much the decisions a man does make that mark him as a Man—but the ones he refrains from making. Like the decision "I've had enough!" ead locked the door and drew his pistol. Sergeant Rashid handed Premier Umluana the warrant. "We're from the UN Inspector Corps," Sergeant Rashid said. "I'm very sorry, but we have to arrest you and bring you in for trial by the World Court." If Umluana noticed Read's gun, he didn't show it. He read the warrant carefully. When he finished, he said something in Dutch. "I don't know your language," Rashid said. "Then I'll speak English." Umluana was a small man with wrinkled brow, glasses and a mustache. His skin was a shade lighter than Read's. "The Inspector General doesn't have the power to arrest a head of state—especially the Premier of Belderkan. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return...