de Amazing Tales Volume 119

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98744-712-9
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 123 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Dive into the enthralling worlds of Amazing Tales Volume 119, a collection that pushes the boundaries of imagination and adventure. This anthology explores themes of pursuit, survival, deception, and the unyielding quest for truth amidst chaos. In Bunzo Farewell by Charles V. De Vet, embark on a thrilling interstellar chase with Sammy Tang as he pursues the elusive criminal Lutscher across galaxies. The vastness of space sets the stage for an adventure filled with intrigue and suspense. Transitioning to Blind Play by Chandler Davis, the narrative takes a darker turn. Set against the backdrop of the infinite cosmos, Nick Pappas, a killer from Callisto, becomes ensnared in a deadly game aboard a vanishing spaceship, where survival depends on wits and deception. Next, in Calling World-4 of Kithgol! by H. B. Fyfe, tensions rise as communication with a distant world becomes crucial. The story weaves a complex tapestry of connection and desperation, highlighting the fragile links between worlds. In Exile From Venus by E. Hoffmann Price, Craig Verrill's reckless vow leads him from the safety of Venus's lush Domes to a ravaged Earth. Here, he must seek the legendary Fire of Skanderbek, challenging both his resolve and destiny. The tone shifts with The Fatal Third by Theodore L. Thomas, where peace is but a distant memory. Humanity stands on the brink of chaos, exploring the fragile balance between war and harmony, a poignant reminder of our own world's struggles. Finally, Crash Beam by John Barrett plunges readers into a technological thriller. Electronics engineer Dan Kearns faces a dire crisis after a catastrophic rocket landing. With a passenger flight in jeopardy, Dan races against time to unravel the mystery of the deadly beam. Each story in Amazing Tales Volume 119 offers a unique journey, inviting readers to explore the limits of human courage and ingenuity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

de, Charles V.

Leseproben

Blind Play

Chandler Davis

Nick Pappas, hired-killer from Callisto, was
strictly out for Pappas—out for Number One, as
they used to say. And now those fools in the
vanishing spaceship thought that number was up!

Nick Pappas had just crossed to the instrument panel of the Tang Chuh-Chih's lifeboat when he heard a sound behind him. He turned quickly.

He had left the airlock between the lifeboat and the ship open. That had been stupid, he realized, but it was too late to correct it now. One of the Tang's two other crew members was approaching down the corridor just beyond the airlock; if he saw the doors slide shut now he'd be immediately suspicious. That would leave Pappas inside the lifeboat, and before he could drain enough fuel from the ship's tanks into the lifeboat's, the other two could have the airlock cut open.

He still had a chance to hide—but before he could propel himself to the other end of the lifeboat, out of sight, Arne Birkerod appeared at the other side of the open airlock.

Birkerod smiled. Pappas stood still, gripping the pilot's seat in front of him.

"Hello, Arne," said Pappas. "I was just checking over the—"

"Good morning, Nick—or good evening, if you like. Let's go up to the control cabin and see Garcia."

For a very brief moment, Pappas considered. Although the Tang was in free fall, he was very conscious of the weight of the gun concealed inside his jacket. He might use it now, but the sound would bring Garcia. Better to bluff it through. The other two might not be suspicious yet, and in a pinch he had the advantage that they weren't armed. "Sure," he said, and pushed himself across to where Birkerod stood.

"After you," said Birkerod, much more politely than usual.

Pappas smiled uncertainly. He planted both feet against the side of the airlock opening, then jumped off. He floated down the ship's corridor to where it took a sharp bend; there he grabbed a rung of a ladder bolted to the corridor wall.

Birkerod had pushed off harder than Pappas had; he arrived at the ladder at the same time. "After you," he said again.

Pappas saw, at the end of the long corridor ahead, the open door to the control cabin. He pushed off in that direction.

Yusuf Garcia was in the ship's pilot's seat. Garcia was half Brazilian and half Malagasy. His eyes had a strong green tint which looked strange against the deep brown-black of his face. Pappas had always been a little afraid of him and the present situation didn't help that any; there was a gun in Garcia's hand.

Birkerod followed Pappas in, taking a seat facing Garcia. "What did you find, Yusuf?" he asked casually.

"Well, Arne, I haven't finished checking up on our little conjecture; the calculator over there is still working on it. But while I was waiting I looked through our friend Pappas's locker. You may already have noticed what I found." He waved the gun. "Where did you find our friend, by the way?"

Birkerod smiled. "First place I looked."

"The lifeboat?"

"Yeah."

"What was he doing?"

"Nothing. I think I know how our little conjecture's going to turn out, though." He turned to Pappas, who had followed the exchange tensely. "You know, Nick, my father was a fellow-countryman of yours back on Earth."

"Countryman?"

"That's right. He lived just north of Winnipeg. My mother was a Canadian, too. Both of them were in the second batch of colonists that left for Callisto. But it doesn't mean much to call you a Canadian any more, does it? Garcia and you and I, we're all Callistans now."

"Sure," said Pappas, wondering.

Callisto: A cold world. A small new world, and a cold world, and incredibly distant from the planet that had evolved its settlers.

In the thirty years since the exploration of Jupiter's satellites had begun, Callisto had had a very different history from the rest. On Ganymede, a hundred or so engineers had been working all that time on the tremendous task of raising the satellite's mean temperature to the point where an atmosphere could be provided and open-air cities and farms built in which Earthmen could live. The smaller satellites had been largely ignored. But it had been found that Callisto had large deposits of ore of such quality that, in spite of the tremendously long haul required to carry anything from there to the inner planets, it was worth while beginning mining operations. Up went the insulated, airtight domes, out came the colonists, down went the mine shafts.

It was a hard life. Crystalline rock was cut by machines at the mine-faces, and by the time other machines had brought it up the shafts to the surface-level in the domes, it had become amorphous and powdery, its crystalline structure destroyed by being heated to twenty degrees below zero Centigrade. When you repaired machinery below the surface, you wore sixty kilograms of spacesuit (Earth weight), and a failure of any item of equipment or a fumble by any member of your crew might mean sudden death. The walls of the dome shut you in from the sky, for the vacuum out there was death too; when you did get up to the observatory to see the sky, you saw Jupiter, weirdly streaked with brilliant color—if your dome was on the side of Callisto toward Jupiter. Otherwise, you looked across twenty million kilometers of vacuum to the nearest star.

It was a hard life, and no life for a lone wolf. There were no homestead farms to be settled by lonely pioneer families. Callisto was a sterile place, and to keep life going there at all men had to work together. Cooperation was a lesson Earth civilization had learned only after thousands of years of oppression and war; a lesson that had to be learned before men could cross space; and a lesson that was very difficult to forget on Callisto. At least for most people.

Rita and Cliff Belden had control of the trade between Callisto and the inner planets. It didn't start as control, though; the way it began was this: Once the colony had been well established, its operation was left completely up to the Callistans, who shipped as much of their goods to Earth as they could manage, and requisitioned as much food and supplies from Earth as they needed—which was really the best way. The inner planets could not very well take part in the planning of Callisto's activities, since there was no radio contact and the trip took over two months by freighter even when the relative positions of the planets in their orbits was most favorable. One freighter shuttled back and forth between No. 2 Dome on Callisto at one end and any of several inner-planet ports at the other. Rita and Cliff Belden were the two Callistans whose job it was to run that freighter.

The little colony was absolutely dependent on the supplies they brought. This fact was obvious to everybody, but the Beldens made a deduction from it which was unprecedented on Callisto: they could threaten to withhold the supplies and thereby force the rest of the colonists to agree to whatever they asked—provided they could make the threat stick. They made the attempt. On one of their trips back from Earth, they put the ship into an orbit around Callisto instead of landing, and announced they would not land until their henchmen on Callisto were in control.

And the henchmen did a thorough job of taking control. All the details were taken care of: They quickly seized the radio transmitters that maintained contact with Ganymede, they confiscated all the reserves of spaceship fuel they could find, they clamped down as tightly as they could on communication between the domes; then they started keeping a close check on every tool that could be used as a weapon. There was just one place they slipped up. Their search for fuel wasn't good enough.

The people of No. 4 Dome pooled the fuel they had hidden from the Beldens; they seized from the Beldens' guards the Dome's tiny spaceship, which had been assembled on Callisto and which had never been intended to leave the Jupiter system; and they sent the ship off for Venus, with Garcia and Birkerod aboard. Venus was the only possible destination, with the planets' positions in their orbits as they were then: to reach Earth or Mars would have taken either more fuel than they had, or much more time than they could spare.

As it was, the trip took eight months.

On Venus there was no hitch. Garcia and Birkerod went to the Liaison Office in Kreingrad, as planned, and were provided with the Tang Chuh-Chih, with a load of supplies—and with Nick Pappas, a former Callistan who wanted to return there. They followed the Liaison Office's suggestion and took Pappas aboard.

"We're all Callistans now," Birkerod repeated. "I wonder, Nick. How did you happen to leave Callisto in the first place? Just felt like visiting good old Saskatchewan? I doubt it. Let's see—you left before that business started with the Beldens, didn't you?"

Pappas licked his lips nervously. Garcia answered for him: "Yes, about ten months before, according to what they told us on Venus."

"Yeah," Birkerod mused. "You know the Beldens, of course."

"Yes," said Pappas, "of course. I came to Earth on their freighter."

"Not their freighter," Garcia put in. "Callisto's freighter, which they were operating. It's only more recently that it's become their freighter."

Birkerod smiled and went on, "It's interesting, Mr. Pappas, that you left Callisto about the time the Beldens' plans must have been taking shape. I wonder why you did?"

Pappas ignored the question. A moment before, the red signal light had flashed on above the calculator set in the opposite bulkhead. The computations had been finished on Garcia and Birkerod's "little...