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...

The Tantrums of Ned Land I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been a good while, since we were completely over our exhaustion. I was the first one to wake up. My companions weren't yet stirring and still lay in their corners like inanimate objects. I had barely gotten up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful reexamination of our cell. Nothing had... more...

op Ganlon was no hero—he was only a spaceman. A spaceman and a father. In fact, Pop was rather no-account, even in a profession that abounded with drifters. He had made a meagre living prospecting asteroids and hauling light freight and an occasional passenger out in the Belt Region. Coffee and cakes, nothing more. Not many people knew Pop had a son in the Patrol, and even fewer knew it when the boy was blasted to a cinder in a back alley... more...

This, then, was the Creche, Anno Domini 2500. A great, mile-square blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a turbulent sea. For five centuries the Creche had stood so, and the Androids had come forth in an unending stream to labor for Man, the Master.... —Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo.   irector Han Merrick paced the floor nervously. His thin, almost ascetic face was pale and drawn. "We... more...