Mack Reynolds

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 it. The enemy ship was doing sixteen, possibly even sixteen and a half. I took the... more...

he knock at the door came in the middle of the night, as Josip Pekic had always thought it would. He had been but four years of age when the knock had come that first time and the three large men had given his father a matter of only minutes to dress and accompany them. He could barely remember his father. The days of the police state were over, so they told you. The cult of the personality was a thing... more...

For some forty years critics of the U.S.S.R. have been desiring, predicting, not to mention praying for, its collapse. For twenty of these years the author of this story has vaguely wondered what would replace the collapsed Soviet system. A return to Czarism? Oh, come now! Capitalism as we know it today in the advanced Western countries? It would seem difficult after almost half a century of State... more...

n other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk. In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched. Or at least rapidly getting there. He wasn't happy about it. It wasn't that kind of a binge. He... more...

The young man with the brown paper bag said, "Is Mrs. Coty in?" "I'm afraid she isn't. Is there anything I can do?" "You're Mr. Coty? I came about the soap." He held up the paper bag. "Soap?" Mr. Coty said blankly. He was the epitome of mid-aged husband complete to pipe, carpet slippers and office-slump posture. "That's right. I'm sure she... more...

Frederick Braun, M.D., Ph.D., various other Ds, pushed his slightly crooked horn-rims back on his nose and looked up at the two-story wooden house. There was a small lawn before it, moderately cared for, and one tree. There was the usual porch furniture, and the house was going to need painting in another six months or so, but not quite yet. There was a three-year-old hover car parked at the curb of a... more...

enry Kuran answered a nod here and there, a called out greeting from a desk an aisle removed from the one along which he was progressing, finally made the far end of the room. He knocked at the door and pushed his way through before waiting a response. There were three desks here. He didn't recognize two of the girls who looked up at his entry. One of them began to say something, but then Betty,... more...

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 Liberté, which leads down to the Grand Socco and the medina. In a three-minute walk from the Place de France you can go from an ultra-modern, California-like resort to the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid. It's quite a town, Tangier.... more...

The two-vehicle caravan emerged from the sandy wastes of the erg and approached the small encampment of Taitoq Tuareg which consisted of seven goat leather tents. They were not unanticipated, the camp's scouts had noted the strange pillars of high-flung dust which were set up by the air rotors an hour earlier and for the past fifteen minutes they had been visible to all. The turmoil in Africa is... more...

he Co-ordinator said, "I suppose I'm an incurable romantic. You see, I hate to see you go." Academician Amschel Mayer was a man in early middle years; Dr. Leonid Plekhanov, his contemporary. They offset one another; Mayer thin and high-pitched, his colleague heavy, slow and dour. Now they both showed their puzzlement. The Co-ordinator added, "Without me." Plekhanov kept his massive... more...