Flying at 1600 m.p.h. you act with split-second timing after you sight the enemy. And you’re allowed only one mistake–your last! My radar picked him up when he was about five hundred miles to my north-northeast and about forty-five miles above me. I switched the velocity calculator on him as fast as I could reach […]

According to tradition,the man who held theGalactic Medal of Honorcould do no wrong. In astrange way, Captain DonMathers was to learnthat this was true. Don Mathers snapped to attention, snapped a crisp salute to his superior, said, “Sub-lieutenant Donal Mathers reporting, sir.” The Commodore looked up at him, returned the salute, looked down at the […]

Every status-quo-caste society in historyhas left open two roads to rise above yourcaste: The Priest and The Warrior. But ina society of TV and tranquilizers–theWarrior acquires a strange new meaning…. Joseph Mauser spotted the recruiting line-up from two or three blocks down the street, shortly after driving into Kingston. The local offices of Vacuum Tube […]

A world had collapsed around this man–a world that would never shout his praises again. The burned-out cities were still and dead, the twisted bodies and twisted souls giving him their last salute in death. And now he was alone, alone surrounded by memories, alone and waiting … Sometimes the queerly shaped Venusian trees seemed […]

One can’t be too cautious about thepeople one meets in Tangier. They’re allweirdies of one kind or another.Me? Oh, I’m A StrangerHere Myself The Place de France is the town’s hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized part of the city, and the beginning of Rue de la […]

A gun is an interesting weapon; it can be hired, of course, and naturally doesn’t care who hires it. Something much the same can be said of the gunman, too…. Joe Prantera called softly, “Al.” The pleasurable, comfortable, warm feeling began spreading over him, the way it always did. The older man stopped and squinted, […]

Shure and begorra, it was a great day for the Earth! The first envoy from another world was about to speak–that is, if he could forget that horse for a minute…. First on the scene were Larry Dermott and Tim Casey of the State Highway Patrol. They assumed they were witnessing the crash of a […]