he cell had been put together more efficiently than any Korvin had ever been in. But that was only natural, he told himself sadly; the Tr'en were an efficient people. All the preliminary reports had agreed on that; their efficiency, as a matter of fact, was what had made Korvin's arrival a necessity. They were well into the atomic era, and were on the verge of developing space travel. Before... more...

THE LEGATEES OF DEUCALION We were both of us not a little stiff as the result of sleeping out in the open all that night, for even in Grand Canary the dew-fall and the comparative chill of darkness are not to be trifled with. For myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle of the island there were not three yards of level to be... more...

Albrecht and I went down in a shuttleship, leaving the stellatomic orbited pole-to-pole two thousand miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere-brushing approach which wouldn't burn off the shuttle's skin, we went as swiftly as we could. A week before we had completed man's first trip through hyperspace. We were now making the first landing on an... more...

The Take-offHigh into air are the great New York buildings lifted by a ray whose source no telescope can find.It seemed only fitting and proper that the greatest of all leaps into space should start from Roosevelt Field, where so many great flights had begun and ended. Fliers whose names had rung—for a space—around the world, had landed here and been received by New York with all the pomp of... more...

"Don't let the old goat rattle you, Pheola," I said as we rode the elevator to the penthouse. "He'll try. Just remember, he is the one who has to say O.K. if we are to give you some training." Her eyes rolled and she moaned softly, clinging to my arm. "Oh, Billy Joe!" she whispered. "I don't want to fail you!" Maragon has some pretty creepy types in his... more...

Twenty-five years ago Cyril Bezdek and E. Carter Dorwin would have met in a private railway car belonging to one of them. They might even have met in a private train. At any rate they would have met in absolute privacy. But it being the present, they had to be content with a series of adjoining rooms taking up less than one half of a car on the Super-Sachem, fastest coast-to-coast train in the country.... more...

Mister Henderson called me into his office my third day back in Tangiers. That was a day and a half later than I'd expected. Roving claims investigators for Tangiers Mutual Insurance Corporation don't usually get to spend more than thirty-six consecutive hours at home base. Henderson was jovial but stern. That meant he was happy with the job I'd just completed, and that he was pretty... more...

"Plato!" Plato leaped to his feet and slid the book under the pillow. Then he seized a textbook at random, and opened it wide. His eyes fastened themselves to the print, seizing upon the meaningless words as if they would save him from a retribution that Rogue Rogan had never had to fear. The dorm master frowned from the doorway. "Plato, didn't you hear the Assembly bell?"... more...

The mail ship, MR4, spun crazily through space a million miles off her trajectory. Her black-painted hull resembled a long thermonuclear weapon, and below her and only a scant twenty million miles away burned the hungry, flaming maw of the Sun. The atomic-powered refrigeration units of the MR4 were working full blast—and still her internal and external temperatures were slowly and inexorably rising.... more...

Altamont cast a quick, routine, glance at the instrument panels and then looked down through the transparent nose of the helicopter at the yellow-brown river five hundred feet below. Next he scraped the last morsel from his plate and ate it. "What did you make this out of, Jim?" he asked. "I hope you kept notes, while you were concocting it. It's good." "The two smoked pork... more...