The sight of an Earthman on Vega III, where it was impossible for an outlander to be, brought angry crowds to surround John Crownwall as he strode toward the palace of Viceroy Tronn Ffallk, ruler of Sector XII of the Universal Holy Empire of Sunda. He ignored the snarling, the spitting, the waving of boneless prehensile fingers, as he ignored the heavy gravity and heavier air of the unfamiliar planet. John Crownwall, florid, red-headed and... more...

The kids who tried to jump Mike the Angel were bright enough in a lot of ways, but they made a bad mistake when they tangled with Mike the Angel. They’d done their preliminary work well enough. They had cased the job thoroughly, and they had built the equipment to take care of it. Their mistake was not in their planning; it was in not taking Mike the Angel into account. There is a section of New York’s Manhattan Island, down on the... more...

If Nature suddenly began to behave differently, what we consider obvious and elementary today might become—unthinkable. In the story THE DESPOILERS in the October 1947 Amazing Stories I raised the question, "Is there anything absolutely beyond human comprehension?" In that story I gave humanity a thousand years to give birth to one man who could comprehend the incomprehensible. The incomprehensible is harder to portray in a story than... more...

TWX WHITE HOUSE TO COL. K. A. BROWN COMMANDER PACIFIC SPACEPORT: CONGRESS PRESSURE HIGH INVESTIGATION IMMINENT MUST HAVE FULL INFORMATION WHY MOON LAUNCHES BEHIND SCHEDULE TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: UNSEASONABLY CONSTANT BAD WEATHER PREVENTS LAUNCHING FOR PAST THREE WEEKS TWX WHITE HOUSE TO BROWN PSP: WHAT KIND OF BAD WEATHER TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: FOG TWX WHITE HOUSE TO BROWN PSP: CONGRESS PRESSURE... more...

Banner ripped open his orders, read them, stared in disbelief for a quick moment, then cursed wildly while reaching for the telephone. "Hello, Gastonia? Yes, I got 'em. What kinda way to waste our time you lunkheads think ... oh, it's you, colonel!" Banner dropped the receiver and let it dangle. He sank into the only soft chair in the apartment and watched hypnotically as the phone's receiver limply coiled and uncoiled at the end of the wire.... more...

An Empty Room The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a nearby railroad. Inside the house there was... more...

The big armor-tender vibrated, gently and not unpleasantly, as the contragravity field alternated on and off. Sometimes it rocked slightly, like a boat on the water, and, in the big screen which served in lieu of a window at the front of the control-cabin, the dingy-yellow landscape would seem to tilt a little. The air was faintly yellow, the sky was yellow with a greenish cast, and the clouds were green-gray. No human had ever set foot on the... more...

Introduction toULLER UPRISING by John F. Carr With the publication of this novel, Uller Uprising, all of H. Beam Piper's previously published science fiction is now available in Ace editions. Uller Uprising was first published in 1952 in a Twayne Science Fiction Triplet—a hardbound collection of three thematically connected novels. (The other two were Judith Merril's Daughters of Earth and Fletcher Pratt's The Long View.) A year later it... more...

Experiment "The first time machine, gentlemen," Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. "True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works." The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.... more...

n the gray darkness the curved fangs of a saber-toothed tiger gleamed white and ghostly. The man-figure that stood half crouched in the mouth of the cave involuntarily shivered. Rawson learns to his cost that the life-spark of a fabled race glows in the black heart of a dead, Western volcano. "Gwanga!" he said. "He goes, too!" But the man did not move more than to shift a club to his right hand. Heavy, that club, and knotted and with a head of... more...