Mullen Amazing Stories Volume 81

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-96865-927-5
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 278 Seiten

Amazing Stories Volume 81 is a great collection of action short stories from 'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are two stories by Stanley Mullen: 'Suicide Command', and 'Lady Into Hell-Cat', one story by Rog Phillips: 'One for the Robot -- Two for the Same', two stories by: Sam Moskowitz: 'World of Mockery', and 'The Way Back', and one story by Clyde Beck: 'Collision Orbit'.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mullen, Stanley

Leseproben

SUICIDE COMMAND
STANLEY MULLEN
The rookie astrogator's fingers itched
for the controls of a ship. But he never
asked for the privilege of riding an
atomic bomb into the heart of hell! Messages crackled through the black gulf of space—the Interplanetary Distress Call. Blaze Norman, navigation officer of the ISP cruiser Scorpio, came out of his space-fog and stared at the helioflash board which was suddenly ablaze with light. Harald, the operator, grunted and spun dials as the frantic messages clicked off. "What's up, Harald?" Norman asked. Harald waved him away impatiently and crouched over his helio receiver board. He was a grizzled old spacehound and hated working with rookie officers. Good kids all right—the examinations saw to that—but you never knew how they were going to react, how much you could depend on them in an emergency. And this was an emergency— Out in the bleak void between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, the spaceliner Tellus was breaking up. Half of her starboard batteries had fused and exploded, that was just the beginning. Before needle-valves could be shut off, streams of free neutrons ran up the fuel lines into the secondary bank of preparation tanks. Radiation counters buzzed angrily as primary degeneration spread through the masses of fuel in the leaden containers. The lead walls buckled and gave way. Tons of molten magma deluged all of the after compartments of the titanic luxury liner. Inferno. Tellus jerked like a nervous racehorse as the rest of her stern rocket tubes froze and exploded. The after third of the ship was blasted out of existence. Heaven knew what would happen when the rest of that degenerating metal reached the stage of instantaneous disintegration. "It's the spaceliner Tellus," Harald snapped. "She's in trouble outside Jupiter. Position 9-84-7. Two degrees N. Ecliptic. Range 11/4.7. Get on your charts and find out what's out there. I'll buzz the old man." Captain Fries' face appeared on the televisor screen. "Never mind the details," he snapped. "We got part of it up here. Too faint for the audios, of course. What ships are in that sector?" Lieutenant Blaze Norman glanced up from the chart panel. "Nothing of any kind closer than Ganymede, sir. And only some slow ore-freighters there. If there's anything else, my records don't show it." Captain Fries' face looked suddenly old and tired. He sighed. "I guess we'll have to go, but I don't know what good a ship this size will do if they have to be taken off. Anything more from the Tellus?" "Not much, sir," Harald told him curtly. "They seemed to be breaking up fast. Half the crew are already dead. No telling about the passengers. Operator thinks they may last five or six hours, but no more. If degeneration spreads through the whole ship, it won't be as long as that." "I know. I know. What about lifeboats?" "Nine of their ten are gone. The other won't hold a third of the survivors." "Tell them to hold on. We're coming. Hang onto your hats, and don't forget the acceleration cushions." Harald set his helioflash transmitter on the automatic relays and sent the message repeating endlessly across the darkness. He shot a calculating glance at Norman and wondered if he'd hold up in the mess that lay ahead. You never knew about these new men. Scorpio had been inbound for Callisto. Alarms shrilled all through her slim torpedo shape. Acceleration warning. The two men in her communications room buckled on their shock cushions and braced themselves. The obsolescent cruiser groaned and began to labor as the standby batteries of rockets let go at full power. A drumming vibration beat through the ship. Indicator needles jerked past painted numerals. Barely perceptible at first, the steadily rising curve of acceleration built into nauseating paralysis. Norman's face was pale and drawn. Harald grinned apishly, enjoying his companion's discomfiture. "Think she'll hold together at twenty Martian gravities?" he asked. Norman realized he was being razzed, and by a subordinate, but he could only smile feebly. "This is one way to find out," he gasped. "How long d'you think it'll take us to get there?" Harald shrugged. "Six hours. Maybe seven. Why'd you join up if you can't stand acceleration?" "I didn't. They transferred me into it. They say you get used to it." "Some never do. The old man's a killer that way." Norman set his teeth grimly. "I'll get used to it." Exactly five hours and twenty minutes later (Earth Time) a fleck of mirrored sunlight in the star-sprinkled darkness ahead gave evidence that the Tellus was still holding out. The Scorpio hammered up in a long, staggering glide, forward rockets bathing her nose with lurid glare at full negative acceleration. Weak and haggard from their incredible run, the ISP crew crawled to stations as the emergency alarms screamed. The Tellus was in a bad way. The shattered hull was still spinning dangerously like an unbalanced top. Fiery drops of molten, disintegrating armor plate whirled into space in deadly showers. Crewmen of the spaceliner waged a losing battle to damp-out the holocaust raging in her stern compartments, and knots of men in clumsy space-suits clustered about the collapsing hull, deluging the plates with Rayburn's Isotope. But the cold of space was too great, and most of the liquified stabilizer dispersed in frost-flakes before it could act on the degenerating metal. Radiation from the masses of spitting magma astern went through the after half of the crippled liner like storms of deadly invisible bullets, striking down the men at their work through weak joints in their armor. The Tellus was doomed. It was ticklish work maneuvering close to the immense hulk, but Captain Fries ran the Scorpio alongside and made fast with magnetic grapnels. ISP men in grotesquely robot-like space-armor ran out the jointed airlock tube and attached it to the main hatch of the liner. Valves opened automatically as the pressure equalized. Captain Fries and Lieutenant Norman were the first to board the doomed liner. They were met by a blood-spattered second officer. "I'm Lore," he said. "The ranking officers are all dead. I'm in command." "How many people have you?" Fries asked savagely. Lore smiled grimly. "I was afraid you'd ask that. Too many for you, I'm afraid." "We'll do all we can," Fries promised. "We've jettisoned everything we could spare. There's ammunition spread from here to .54, not to mention bedding, supplies, tools, spare parts and all but the bare minimum of fuel. At a squeeze, we can get about a hundred and forty people on the Scorpio besides our complement of twenty-eight men. I don't know what we'll do about the others." Lore shook his head. "I can't tell you exactly how many are left. There's no use taking the ones who are too seriously burned. We have one lifeboat left. By jamming, we can get about eighty in it. You can tow it to Callisto." "Any other officers left?" "Merrill, our third ... if he's still alive. The last I saw, he was outside with the others, trying to damp-out the stuff. No use, of course. I guess you'd better take over. I've got mine." Lore staggered and fell back against a bulkhead. Norman caught him and lowered him gently to the floor. Lore fought his blistered lids open, murmured, "Radiation burns," with lips that were strangely thickened. He jerked spasmodically, then a glaze of agony masked his eyes as he shuddered and lay still. The main salon of the spaceliner was a charnel house. Dead and dying lay in rows, many of them in horribly grotesque attitudes reflecting the agony of their passing. A harried doctor was doing what could be done to relieve the unrelievable suffering. A group of passengers were huddled into a corner. Most of them were pale and dull-eyed, a few sobbed hysterically, some prayed. Norman began sorting them out. "Women and children first. Married men next. We'll go over the injured while the rest of you get aboard the Scorpio. Any that have a chance to recover, we'll take. No crowding." Fries shouted orders, then stood back out of the way while a stream of beaten and hopeless humanity filed through the airlock toward the Scorpio. One woman clung to her husband, screaming, until Norman took her gently by the arm and led her away. She moved like a sleep-walker and, though her lips twitched as if in speech, no sound came. "Check everyone for radiation," Fries ordered gruffly. "We can't be too careful." Merrill, the third officer, came in and started shedding his space-armor. He was lean, hard-looking, with a twisted, humorous face. "Anything I can do?" he asked curtly. Fries stared at him blankly. "Get your burns taken care of, then get some of these people into the lifeboat if you're able." Merrill shrugged and laughed. "Why bother to patch me up? There won't be room enough for all of us. I'll take care of it now; the lifeboat's ready." Harald felt like a recording angel as he stood in the airlock counting off the people coming through. It was hideous. "One-forty," he told Fries. Most of the injured had gone into the lifeboat, but some of the men-passengers still remained in the saloon. Norman stared about him, estimating. One of the men was the husband of the woman who had refused to leave without him. "Full up?" the man asked. Norman nodded. The passenger tried to smile, but his lips trembled. Captain Fries stood by the airlock. Norman strode up to him, lips set in a thin line. "I'd like permission to stay here and let someone have my place," he burst out. "There are other single men in your crew." Captain Fries had aged years in...