I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools, had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter outlook of a naughty... more...

CHAPTER I Off to the Rendezvous Hawk Carse himself goes to keep Judd the Kite's rendezvous with the sinister genius Ku Sui. Though it is seldom nowadays that Earthmen hear mention of Hawk Carse, there are still places in the universe where his name retains all its old magic. These are the lonely outposts of the farthest planets, and here when the outlanders gather to yarn the idle hours away their... more...

District Leader Howard Morely leaned back in his seat, to glance down at the bay. Idly, he allowed his gaze to wander over the expanse of water between the two blunt points of land, then he looked back at the skeletonlike spire which jutted upward from the green hills he had just passed over. He could remember when that ruin had been a support for one of the world's great bridges. Now, a crumbling... more...

THE GREEK SLAVE AND THE LITTLE ROMAN BOY Ariston, the Greek slave, was busily painting. He stood in a little room with three smooth walls. The fourth side was open upon a court. A little fountain splashed there. Above stretched the brilliant sky of Italy. The August sun shone hotly down. It cut sharp shadows of the columns on the cement floor. This was the master's room. The artist was painting... more...

Chapter I “The Stowmarket Mystery”   “Mr. David Hume.” Reginald Brett, barrister-detective, twisted round in his easy-chair to permit the light to fall clearly on the card handed to him by his man-servant. “What does Mr. David Hume look like, Smith?” he asked. “A gentleman, sir.” Well-trained servants never make a mistake when they give such a description of a visitor. Brett was... more...

nder the glow of Saturn and his Rings, five of the airdomes of the new colony on Titan were still inflated. They were enormous bubbles of clear, flexible plastic. But the sixth airdome had flattened. And beneath its collapsed roof, propped now by metal rods, a dozen men in spacesuits had just lost all hope of rescuing the victims of the accident. Bert Kraskow, once of Oklahoma City, more recently a... more...

Introduction It seems desirable, at the outset, to set forth certain general conclusions regarding the Tinguian and their neighbors. Probably no pagan tribe of the Philippines has received more frequent notice in literature, or has been the subject of more theories regarding its origin, despite the fact that information concerning it has been exceedingly scanty, and careful observations on the language... more...

From Istanbul, in Turkish Thrace, to Moscow, U.S.S.R., is only a couple of hours outing for a round trip in a fast jet plane—a shade less than eleven hundred miles in a beeline. Unfortunately, Mr. Raphael Poe had no way of chartering a bee. The United States Navy cruiser Woonsocket, having made its placid way across the Mediterranean, up the Aegean Sea, and through the Dardanelles to the Bosporous,... more...

CHAPTER I. The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;My censer's breath the mountain airs,And silent thoughts my only prayers.MOORE The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye. The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable... more...

PROEM "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her" I can hear it always—the Call of the Prairie. The passing of sixty Winters has left me a vigorous man, although my hair is as white as the January snowdrift in the draws, and the strenuous events of some of the years have put a tax on my strength. I shall always limp a little in my right foot—that was left out on the plains one... more...