Lost Sci-Fi

The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick - Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw it hanging in the town square. From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.

Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.

Most experiments were dropped because they failed--and some because they worked too well!

I just lost a weekend. I ain't too anxious to find it. Instead, I sure wish I had gone fishing with McCarthy and the boys like I'd planned.

I drive a beer truck for a living, but here it is almost noon Monday and I haven't turned a wheel. Sure, I get beer wholesale, and I have been known to take some advantage of my discount. But that wasn't what happened to this weekend.

Instead of fishing or bowling or poker or taking the kids down to the amusement park over Saturday and Sunday, I've been losing sleep over an experiment.

Down at the Elks' Club, the boys say that for a working stiff I have a very inquiring mind. I guess that's because they always see me reading Popular Science and Scientific American and such, instead of heading for the stack of Esquires that are piled a foot deep in the middle of the big table in the reading room, like the rest of them do.

Well, it was my inquiring mind that lost me my wife, the skin of my right hand, a lot of fun and sleep--yeah, not a wink of sleep for two days now! Which is the main reason I'm writing this down now. I've read somewheres that if you wrote down your troubles, you could get them out of your system.

I thought I had troubles Friday night when I pulled into the driveway and Lottie yelled at me from the porch, "The fire's out! And it's flooded. Hurry up!"

Trouble, hah! That was just the beginning.

Death Star by James McKImmey Jr. - For twenty long unholy years Hurtz, the pilot, dreamed of retirement ... and found his "acre of heaven" on a Death Star.

Hurtz went through the automatic motions of preparing himself for their landing on the small unnamed planet, but each thing he did was a wasted motion because it was really the boy, Jones, who was going to put the rocket down. And what could Hurtz do now? The hard, aging muscles of his body were taut, and although the lines about his eyes had deepened, his eyes, blue and sparkling, still retained their old ferocity.

Jones, the boy, moved his hands and the rocket made its turn clumsily, pointing its blazing fins at the strange globe beyond. Hurtz shook his head and asked himself why he had ever tried to help this cocky, all-knowing kid with the thin mouth and short-clipped hair.

The boy had fought everything Hurtz had tried to do for him, and right now Hurtz knew, even before he said it, that the boy would respond in the same way he had since the trip started: "I think you're doing all right," Hurtz said, and he tried to keep the tone of his voice casual, as though he really meant what he said.

The boy glanced at him briefly with insolent eyes. "I know I am," he said. Hurtz had to clamp his jaw shut tightly to keep from saying anything more.

There was hardly any time involved in this landing, but each second stretched out to an individual eternity. The distant globe came up to meet them steadily, enlarging its circumference, and the roar of the jets was thunderous after the quiet free movement they had made through space.

There was nothing left for Hurtz to do now but wait, and he placed his hands on his knees, raising his curled fingers, dropping them, in a monotonous silent tapping. It isn't right. None of it. The feel of it--the speed, the sound, the very movement. It isn't going to work, and why not, on this one last run?

The Mind Digger by Winston Marks - There was a reason why his scripts were smash hits--they had realism. And why not? He was reliving every scene and emotion in them!

It was really a pretty fair script, and it caught me at a moment when every playwright worth his salt was playing in France, prostituting in Hollywood or sulking in a slump. I needed a play badly, so I told Ellie to get this unknown up to my office and have a contract ready.

When she announced him on the intercom, my door banged open and a youngster in blue-jeans, sweatshirt and a stubbly crew-cut popped in like a carelessly aimed champagne cork.

I said, "I'm sorry, son, but I have an interview right now. Besides we aren't casting yet. Come back in a couple of weeks."

His grin never faltered, being of the more durable kind that you find on farms and west of the Rockies. His ragged sneakers padded across my Persian, and I thought he was going to spring over my desk like a losing tennis player.

"I'm your interview," he announced.

The Martians and The Coys by Mack Reynolds - Lem didn't like guarding the still while Paw and the boys went feuding. He wanted to get a shot at some Martins too! Yup, he sure did...

Maw Coy climbed the fence down at the end of the south pasture and started up the side of the creek, carrying her bundle over her shoulder and puffing slightly at her exertion.

She forded the creek there at the place where Hank's old coon dog Jigger was killed by the boar three years ago come next hunting season. Jumping from rock to rock across the creek made her puff even harder; Maw Coy wasn't as young as she once was.

On the other side she rested a minute to light up her pipe and to look carefully about before heading up the draw. She didn't really expect to see any Martins around here, but you never knew. Besides, there might've been a revenue agent. They were getting mighty thick and mighty uppity these days. You'd think the government'd have more to do than bother honest folks trying to make an honest living.

The pipe lit, Maw swung the bundle back over her shoulder and started up the draw. Paw and the boys, she reckoned were probably hungry as a passel of hound dogs by now. She'd have to hurry.

When she entered the far side of the clearing, she couldn't see any signs of them so she yelled, "You Paw! You Hank and Zeke!" Maw Coy liked to give the men folks warning before she came up on the still. Hank, in particular, was mighty quick on the trigger sometimes.

But there wasn't any answer. She trudged across the clearing to where the still was hidden in a cluster of pines. Nobody was there but Lem.

She let the bundle down and glowered at him. "Lem, you no-account, why didn't you answer me when I hollered?"

He grinned at her vacuously, not bothering to get up from where he sat whittling, his back to an old oak. "Huh?" he said. A thin trickle of brown ran down from the side of his mouth.

Breeder Reaction by Winston Marks - The remarkable thing about Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder was that it gave you that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just the way the advertisements said it would. In fact, it also gave you a little something more!

The advertising game is not as cut and dried as many people think. Sometimes you spend a million dollars and get no results, and then some little low-budget campaign will catch the public's fancy and walk away with merchandising honors of the year.

Let me sound a warning, however. When this happens, watch out! There's always a reason for it, and it isn't always just a matter of bright slogans and semantic genius. Sometimes the product itself does the trick. And when this happens people in the industry lose their heads trying to capitalize on the "freak" good fortune.

This can lead to disaster. May I cite one example? I was on loan to Elaine Templeton, Inc., the big cosmetics firm, when one of these "prairie fires" took off and, as product engineer from the firm of Bailey Hazlitt & Persons, Advertising Agency, I figured I had struck pure gold. My assay was wrong. It was fool's gold on a poolof quicksand.

Madame "Elaine", herself, had called me in for consultation on a huge lipstick campaign she was planning--you know, NOW AT LAST, A TRULY KISS-PROOF LIPSTICK!--the sort of thing they pull every so often to get the ladies to chuck their old lip-goo and invest in the current dream of non-smearability. It's an old gimmick, and the new product is never actually kiss-proof, but they come closer each year, and the gals tumble for it every time.

Well, they wanted my advice on a lot of details such as optimum shades, a new name, size, shape and design of container. And they were ready to spend a hunk of moolah on the build-up. You see, when they give a product a first-class advertising ride they don't figure on necessarily showing a profit on that particular item.

Planet of Dreams by James McKimmey Jr. - The climate was perfect, the sky was always blue, and--best of all--nobody had to work. What more could anyone want?

It was a small world, a tiny spinning globe, placed in the universe to weather and age by itself until the end of things. But because its air was good and its earth was fertile, Daniel Loveral had placed a finger upon a map and said, "This is the planet. This is the Dream Planet."

That was two years before, back on Earth. And now Loveral with his selected flock had shot through space, to light like chuckling geese upon the planet, to feel the effect of their dreams come true.

Loveral was sitting in his office, drumming his long fingers against his desk while the name, Atkinson, ticked through his brain like the sound of a sewing machine. Would he be the only one, Loveral asked himself, or was he just the first? In either case, it was up to Loveral, as leader and guiding hand, to stop this thing and stop it quickly.

Loveral stood up and put on his jacket, although there was no need for it, other than the formality it gave his figure. He stepped out of his office into a clear bright day, where the air was clean and fresh in his lungs, at once like frost and fire and sweet perfume. He walked along a winding path, which was bordered by slim-necked flowers and a short hedge whose even clipped lines were kept neat by tireless robot hands.

And All The Girls Were Nude by Richard Magruder - Nathanial Evergood was an eccentric old man with a photographic passion for pretty girls. So he invented a camera lens for special effects — And All The Girls Were Nude!

Appearances oftentimes can be deceiving, and things most certainly aren't always as they seem. Take the case of Nathanial Evergood, for instance.

The nature of this old man was such that nobody ever called him Nat, not even his closest working companions in the company's bookkeeping department. As long as any of them had ever known Nathanial Evergood there had never been the slightest indication of any desire of his for intimacy or even friendship.

Not once had he shared a drink or lunch or relaxed conversation with anyone, so far as his associates knew. To say Nathanial was reserved is putting it mildly.

It would be more accurate to describe this little old man as dull—completely and absolutely dull. In his appearance, his dress, his speech, in every way imaginable.

But, in addition to being quite dull—as everyone knew, Nathanial Evergood was also a thoroughly evil and obscene old man, as no one knew.

Never Gut-Shoot A Wampus by Winston Marks - An interstellar hunting trip with Major Daphne could teach a man a number of lessons. Like being kind to fellow human beings, or— Never Gut-shoot A Wampus!

I'm not exactly broke, but this Major Daphne owned more planets than I do golf balls. Whereas my mining interests were mostly on earth, the Major got in early on the Centaurus grab. A whole generation later, all I could stake out was one hot little hunk of tropical mud that no one else would fool with.

Daphne liked to kid me about my "galactic empire" every time we collided at the club. I was a bachelor and Daphne was married, but he spent more time there than I.

He was a bear of a man with a bull-moose voice, the chest and shoulders of an ape, the appetite of a goat and the morals of a rabbit. There were few wealthier men in the system and none half so noisy about it. His favorite approach to bragging was to tell of his interstellar hunting expeditions.

It costs money to push even a private boat around out there, and nobody but a fatheaded, ostentatious trillionaire would consider blowing half a billion to shoot a brace of pink-eyed grouse, or travel a parsec to blast a two-ton Lartizian lizard.

He nailed me one morning in the slime-bath at the club. I was soaking out a hang-over and a few wrinkles in the filthy anti-biotic goo up in health service, when Major Daphne charged in with a towel around his fat middle and plunked down in the next vat. He splashed a gob of the vile smelling green stuff in my face, and I cursed him out.

Three Spacemen Left To Die by Russ Winterbotham - Disease contaminated their ship; any moment one of them might become infected and spray lethal sparks to the others. There was no cure—except prevention. And that meant — Three Spacemen Left To Die!

Commander Al Andrews had closed and locked the energy-proof, neutralizing bulkheads against the creeping red glow that infected one quadrant of his circular space ship. Now he stood in the Control Center, in the mid-section of the revolving wagon-wheel ship, looking at Oakey Matthews.

There had been times aboard this ship when a whole crew had been comfortable in months-long trips through space. But now there were only three men, three men fleeing from death and it was no longer comfortable here, because death was breathing down the neck of at least one of them.

Oakey was intent on the instruments in front of him. Oakey was young, with a face that glowed with velvet skin. Even in space Oakey shaved every day, shined his shoes and pressed his uniform. Al was sloppy, bearded and ungroomed. But Al had lived most of his 50 years in space.

Oakey looked up toward Al. His young eyes searched the hard leathery face of his commander. He saw the grim set to Al's jaw and the hard lines around the older man's eyes. Al was cold. Nerveless as a piece of rope.

"How's Joe?" Oakey asked.

Al shook his head. "Last stages," he said. The commander went to a tier of built-in drawers across the room from the control panel. His arm reached out, pulled on the third drawer from the bottom. From this drawer he took an old-fashioned revolver and a box of shells. Not ordinary shells. The bullets were plastic, strong enough to pierce flesh, too soft to rupture the walls of the space ship.

"Don't do it, Al," Oakey said, watching the commander.

Al shook his head. He slipped bullets into the cylinder.

Leave Earthmen or Die! by John Massie Davis - Murph, Forsyth, and Jamison heard the alien voice warn them. And to each it sounded familiar—a sweetheart, a son, a hated enemy!

In a dwindling spiral they circled the planet, and Murph's cold blue eyes studied the radarscreen. Things looked good: no sign of cities, social denizens or humanoids. He was scribbling notes on his desk when the all-wave above him started crackling.

He watched the green line sweep back and forth along the dial, finally centering on the wave length which was broadcasting. As it focused, the speaker sputtered in.

"... in accordance with Interstellar Code," it sounded like a recording, "... we repeat. Landings and colonizing efforts have been previously attempted upon this planet. They are not welcome and have not been successful. Change course and seek other areas. This warning is being broadcast upon wavelengths available to you and in language translatable by you in accordance with Interstellar Code...." Murphy switched it off and looked at his crew of two.

"Well?" Forsyth grinned at him. "The hell with them! We've heard that from every race in the solar system—one way or another. I say we land."

Jamison shrugged. "Put 'er down anywhere. Makes no difference to me." His scarred lips tightened.

"Okay," Murph switched the set back on. The same record was playing, monotonously.

"Load up with combat equipment, boys. We're going in."

The deadly silver needle tightened the spiral course around the planet, and above Murph the speaker crackled again and went dead.

"Guess they got tired of playing that record," he muttered.

Another crackling and the mechanism blared again.

"... we see you intend disregarding our warning. In accordance with Interstellar Code, it is only fair to warn you...." It clicked off abruptly as Murph jabbed at the switch. No use listening to this outworld nonsense.

Somehow Jeff Engel followed the stranger into another world—among people who hated all aliens. And of course, he was now one himself!

Jeff Engel studied the feverish crowd hurrying through the subway turnstiles. As he checked each passing face against a card-index mind, he smiled to himself. Even when off duty, the habit persisted. There was always the chance he'd spot a face that would fit, one that would close another active file in Missing Persons Bureau.

A mousey little guy slipped through a turnstile and bumped into a fat woman shopper. Engel glanced at the thin apologetic face and then at a briefcase bearing the faded initials, "C. G." As a train rumbled in and the noise of the commuters rose, something glinted at Engel's feet. He bent down, curious. It was a cheap fountain pen inscribed with the same initials. He caught a glimpse of the stranger on the crowded subway stairs.

"Wait a minute, mister!" he yelled. When C. G. didn't turn, Engel hesitated, then pounded up the stairs into dazzling sunlight. He squinted around at people and then over low bushes into the city park where he saw the little fellow walking briskly. Annoyed, Engel trotted down a shady walk, then down a quiet lane and finally reached out to tap his shoulder.

C. G. vanished in thin air. Engel slid to a halt and rubbed his eyes. Fearfully he explored this queer illusion, his hands pawing nothingness. There was a roar like a thousand subway trains, and something invisible and powerful hurled him sprawling. He lay stunned as the noise died away and then sat up to nurse a bruised head.

Someone grabbed his arms, jerked him rudely to his feet, and spun him around. A tall gangling cop glared down at him. "You been drinking?" "W-what?" Engel stammered. Confused, he looked more closely at this man who wore a gray metallic uniform, a glittering badge, and an oddly shaped holster. "I wasn't drinking. Something pushed me."

The Voyage Of Vanishing Men written by Stanley Mullen Earthmen had never ventured into the vast unknown beyond the galaxy. But now a survey was ordered and a ship sent out. So Braun went on — The Voyage Of Vanishing Men.

They still talk of Braun, and the Fourth Intergalactic Survey.

Other men before him had gone out into the far, dark places. Three previous expeditions had gone out and vanished completely. Then the Venture IV went out and out and out countless miles and light-years and whatever else it is—and out there in the lonely darkness something happened. Nobody knew exactly what happened, but there was a lot of guessing. Only one man came back. Braun. And there was talk....

Tending bar anywhere is better, they say, than an academic degree in psychology. Tending bar on one of the way stations to the stars you see people—most of them human—as they really are, and in all stages of emotion. You see them coming and going, and a few already gone. By little signs, you can tell a lot about them, and make a guess at what is wrong with the wrong ones.

There was Braun.

Nobody said anything, at first.

Braun watched them, a humorous half-defiant glint in his eye. But there was pain in him, in his voice as he spoke.

"What's the matter? Am I poison, or something?"

Somebody said it, then. In a stage whisper. "I had friends on the Venture IV."

"So did I," Braun answered quickly. "A lot of friends. So before somebody works up nerve to ask, I don't know."

"Don't know?" a man named Cutter pursued the point coldly. "You were there!..."

"I was there," admitted Braun. "I still say it. I don't know what happened to anybody. I've told the authorities that over and over. I've told anybody who'd listen. You don't have to believe me. I don't give a—"

A Zloor For Your Trouble written by Mack Reynolds

Prescott stood to make a young fortune if he could capture a martian zloor—dead or alive! Was there a catch to it? Only for the hunter!

"Keep my size out of it," I snapped. I indicated with a thumb a little statuette on my desk. "The guy my mother named me after was pint size too. He got along all right."

He looked over at Bonaparte. "Ummm," he said. "Napoleon was a big name once—but he's only a bust now." "Listen, you're asking for a bust yourself. Why don't you run along? I'm busy."

He ignored me, found a chair that had nothing but a few magazines on it, tossed them to the floor and sat down. "Your name was brought up because you're the smallest professional hunter on Earth. It'd save a few thousand credits in getting you to Mars and back." "What in kert are you talking about?" I growled. "The government wants a specimen, at least one, of a zloor."

"A what?" "A zloor. A small Martian animal." I scowled at him. "And just why does the government want a zloor?" "That's a secret."

"Okay. I'll tell you another secret. Somebody else can catch the government a zloor. I've never been off Earth and I haven't any particular hankering to go now."

"I doubt if you could have got one anyway." I said easily, "If anyone else could catch it, I could."

He reached for the doorknob, "I'd lay a thousand credits against that," he said. He began to leave. "Wait a minute, buddy. Are you just sounding off or have you got a thousand credits you don't care what happens to?"

He turned and faced me. "I am willing to wager a thousand credits that you can't capture a zloor."

"How big are they?" "About the size of a rabbit." I glowered at him. "They very fast, or very poisonous, or what?" He shrugged. "They can't run quite as fast as a common Terran hare, and I understand they're quite gentle."

"Then why haven't they been captured?"

Danger in the Void written by Charles E. Fritch Silvia secretly planned to divorce George when they reached Arcturus. But a space journey can alter a careful plan—or hatch a worse one!

The trouble started when the Arcturus Queen was four billion miles out of Earth, heading for the star after which it was named. It pulled clear of the solar system using conventional drive, then switched into subspace. A few minutes later the ship shuddered perceptibly, and an authoritative voice came reassuringly from the public address system.

"Passengers will please remain in their seats. We are temporarily cutting the subspace drive due to mechanical difficulties which have developed. There is no cause for alarm."

The message was repeated and George said, "What do you suppose is the matter?"

"How should I know," Silvia snapped. "I'm not a space mechanic. Why don't you find out if you're so interested."

He glared at her. "I was just wondering. You don't have to get so disagreeable. But then, why should now be any different?"

She smiled at that, though her blood raced and her fingers itched to make red ribbons of his face. "I've got plenty of reason to be disagreeable—"

"Okay, okay," he said; "let's not go through that again." He got up. "I'm going up to the observation platform." And he went down the aisle between the rows of seats and disappeared through a door at the farthest end.

She glared after him. That was always his way, running out on an argument. Well, when this trip was over, there would be no more running away.

A man dropped into the seat beside her.

"This seat's taken," she said automatically, and then realized the man must have known, since all seats were reserved.

"I know," the man said. "I'd like to talk to you."

A Matter of Ethics written by Russ Winterbotham - Homer was a shy Faderfield bachelor; his visitor was a beautiful Pleiades girl. At any rate she was a girl, and Homer had a problem—A Matter of Ethics

The fly rod, the letter and the small jar of paint were, in a sense, half of the problem Homer Hopkins had to solve. The other half rested in his complex mind.

Fader's Fadeless Formulae had offered him a position, not a job, to take charge of its research department, at ten thousand a year, twice what he was paid at Faderfield Junior College to teach chemistry. All this was in the letter.

"But I like being a teacher," said Homer. And he looked at the fly rod. "And I also like to fish." Teaching chemistry had left him little time for fishing. The science had advanced with such gigantic strides that Homer was continually catching up on the subject. He spent his vacations going to colleges, and his off days reading literature, orienting himself.

The little jar of paint had brought it about. Homer had sent a jar like it to C. J. Fader suggesting that it be placed on the market. All Homer had wanted was a fat check, and a royalty which he could invest so he could retire someday. Instead, C. J. Fader had offered him a job. The Old Man, who ran the principal industry of Faderfield, would expect a new formula a month and Homer was afraid he might not be able to turn one out every month. Homer knew enough about C. J. to realize that if he offered ten thousand, he would expect a ninety-thousand profit. Homer could qualify for the first figure, but he wasn't so sure about the second.

And then the door bell rang.

Slay-Ride written By Winston Marks - Who ever thought that Frane Lewis—wholesale triggerman, spaceways pirate—would be the sweating victim of a simple, webbed, nylon garment known as spaceman's underwear?

Frane Lewis enjoyed another sadistic shiver as he moved up the narrow passageway to the captain's control room. To his flared nostrils the warm, moist air of the small space-freighter was still heavy with the smell of death. A psychiatrist could have told him that this was a neural confusion of olfactory sensation with the perverted emotional excitement of murder. But no physicians ever attended Frane's murders, except at inquests.

Three crewmen, still warm, lay at their posts with bloody splotches staining their tunic pockets. Two more chores aboard and his pay, fabulous pay, was earned.

For Frane simple plans worked best. He rapped on the gray magnesium panel. "Your lunch, sir," he called. Inside, a solenoid thumped. The port slid aside revealing the captain's square back outlined against the white-sprinkled velvet of space. As the executive turned away from the transparent nose dome Frane's weapon spoke its final invitation to eternity. The captain's eyes clamped shut, and in the reduced gravity he buckled to the deck in slow motion.

Then Frane swore as the dimly lighted astro-pit revealed another person. What was the navigator doing up here at this time of watch? The tall, uniformed second officer reacted even as unbelieving horror swept his face.

Shoving off from the bulkhead Frane dodged the officer's lunge with a quick side-step, but the motion smashed the side of his curly head into a grip stanchion. His ears rang, and blood spurted from a forehead gash. In a cold rage he watched his opponent recover and crouch for another spring. "Sucker! you could have died nice and easy. Now we shall see!"

The Addicts Written by William Morrison - Wives always try to cure husbands of bad habits, even on lonely asteroids!

You must understand that Palmer loved his wife as much as ever, or he would never have thought of his simple little scheme at all. It was entirely for her own good, as he had told himself a dozen times in the past day. And with that he stilled whatever qualms of conscience he might otherwise have had. He didn't think of himself as being something of a murderer.

She was sitting at the artificial fireplace, a cheerful relic of ancient days, reading just as peacefully as if she had been back home on Mars, instead of on this desolate outpost of space. She had adjusted quickly to the loneliness and the strangeness of this life—to the absence of friends, the need for conserving air, the strange feeling of an artificial gravity that varied slightly at the whim of impurities in the station fuel. To everything, in fact, but her husband.

She seemed to sense his eyes on her, for she looked up and smiled. "Feeling all right, dear?" she asked.

"Naturally. How about you?"

"As well as can be expected."

"Not very good, then."

She didn't reply, and he thought, She hates to admit it, but she really envies me. Well, I'll fix it so that she needn't any more. And he stared through the thick, transparent metal window at the beauty of the stars, their light undimmed by dust or atmosphere.

The stories told about the wretchedness of the lighthouse keepers who lived on asteroids didn't apply at all to this particular bit of cosmic rock. Life here had been wonderful, incredibly satisfying. At least it had been that way for him. And now it would be the same way for his wife as well.

The Queen of Space written by Joseph Slotkin - Helen LaTour had the best hip wriggle in galactic Burleyque. In fact, it was so good she hipped herself smack into another dimension!

I was relaxin' with my second Plutonian Stinger in the dignified atmosphere of Charley's Venusian Retreat when there was this strange noise outside the dive, like a flock of hot jets hittin' the atmosphere. Right after a character comes bustin' through the door.

He looks behind him, scared-like, wipin' his forehead with a handkerchief as big as one of Charley's tablecloths, only cleaner. He stops near my table.

"I beg your pardon, would you mind if I joined you?"

"Listen, buster, if you got a ulterior motif, such as a touch, you kin hop a jet, and—" I starts. Then I get a really good look, and hear myself sayin', "Hey, you don't look so good. Maybe you better sit down."

"Thank you, oh thank you very much," he says, floppin' onto one of Charley's flexible plastic stools.

"Well, I guess I kin maybe be a sucker and go fer just one," I says, while he is still mutterin' somethin' to hisself. "Waiter! Hey, mug!" I turns back to the little fella, feelin' real expansive, like they say.

"What'll be your pleasure, buster?"

"Oh, but please allow me."

Well, this is a new angle—a panhandler puttin' hisself on the pan. But far be it from me to refuse a barroom curtsy, so I orders another Jupiter sling.

"I'll have two of those drinks on your tray," the little guy pipes up to the waiter. And the mug, who is also one of Charley's best bouncers, almost drops his load.

"Hey, mister, these here's Plutonian stingers," the waiter yells.

"Y'know what's in them things, fella?" I chimes in. "They get ground vesicantus herbs from Pluto, and—"

"Oh, what difference does it make?" The little guy looked mournful. "He'll get me sooner or later, and then—"

The Fifty-Fourth of July by Alan E. Nourse - Matt had to destroy the rocket because it was a symbol of evil that had brought economic disaster. But must he also destroy—the future?

It was well after dark when Matt Matthews got back down to the headquarters camp, and saw the city stranger sitting there before the fire. He knew he was a city man after a single glance at the shiny, low-topped shoes and the reminiscence of a crease in the dusty trousers. Matt tossed the gophers and the two small coyotes off his broad shoulders to old Moe Arhelger, across the campfire, staring in suspicious silence from the stranger to Moe and back again. "Who's he?" he asked finally.

"He wants to go down to the Ship," said Moe, tossing another stick into the fire. He was a thin, wiry old man, with a white rim of beard scraggling over his lean jaw. A short-bit pipe was clenched between a set of very bad teeth. On his head was a torn, filthy old felt hat, but his clear blue eyes held the silent confidence of authority. The old man puffed quietly as he glanced up at the young giant who had just arrived. "His name's Loevy—he says. Flew over from El Paso this morning in a 'copter, just to see me. Even knew my name—"

"Everybody in New Mexico knows your name," Matthews growled.

The old man nodded, his eyes bright. "Mr. Loevy wants to go down to the Ship tonight."

Matt stared at the stranger's half-day stubble. Then he burst out laughing. "That's what we all want to do, buddy. Just go down to the Ship. That's all. Only trouble is, the Bulldog isn't ready to lay out the welcome mat for us just yet." He glanced over at Moe. "Did the doc say anything about Jack Abel?"

"Jack's dead. Three slugs in the head."