There was a three-day-old moon in the sky when the last colors faded in the west. When darkness fell it was already low. It gave little light; not much more than the stars alone. It did help Lockley while it lasted however. He knew the terrain about Boulder Lake but not in detail. And it would not be wise for him to move openly to wreak destruction on the enemies of his nation. He used the moonlight for his approach by the least practical route to the lake. When it dimmed and went behind the mountains, he continued to climb, sliding...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1362
It was very likely that at that moment Lockley despised himself more bitterly than any other man alive. He blamed himself absolutely for Jill's capture. If there were humans acting with the alien invaders, her fate would unquestionably be more horrible than at the hands of the monsters alone. After all, there was one nation most likely to deal with extra-terrestrial creatures to help them in the conquest of earth, and its troops were not notorious for their kindly behavior to civilians. And Jill was their captive. He'd been carried past the place where a terror beam blocked the road. The...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2156
It was a ticklish job getting the car out of the garage and into the street. Lockley was afraid that starting the motor would make a noise which in the silence of the town's absolute abandonment could be heard for a long way. The grinding of the starter, though, lasted only for seconds. It might make men listen, but they could hardly locate it before the motor caught and ran quietly. Also, the trailer-truck was still in motion and making its own noise. Of course it was probably posting watchers and listeners here and there to try to find Lockley and...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 853
The driver was avidly curious about the area where supposedly no human being could survive. He asked absorbed questions, especially and insistently about the aliens. Jill said that she'd seen a few of them, but only at a distance. They'd been investigating the evacuated construction camp. They were about the size of men. She couldn't describe them, but they weren't human beings. He seemed to find it unthinkable that she hadn't examined them in detail. Lockley came to her rescue. He observed that he'd been a prisoner of the invaders, and had escaped. Then the driver's curiosity became insatiable. He wanted...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2147
"The evidence," said Lockley as Jill looked at him ashen-faced, "the evidence is all for monsters. But there was something in that broadcast that calls for courage, and I want to summon it. We're going to need it." "If they aren't monsters," said Jill in a stricken voice, "Then--then they're men. And we have a cold war with only one country, and they're the only ones who'd play a deadly trick like this. So if they aren't monsters, in the ship, they must be men, and they'd kill anybody who found it out." "But again," insisted Lockley, "the evidence is still...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1739
It was a long descent, made longer by the blindfold and clumsier by his inability to move his arms. More than once Lockley stumbled. Twice he fell. The clawlike hands or handlike claws lifted him and thrust him on the way that was being chosen for him. There were whistling squeaks. Presently he realized that some of them were directed at him. A squeak or whistle in a warning tone told him that he must be especially careful just here. He came to accept the warnings. It occurred to him that the squeaks sounded very much like those button-shaped hollow whistles...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1628
The car was ordinary enough; it was one of those scaled-down vehicles which burn less fuel and offer less comfort than the so-called standard models. For fuel economy too, its speed had been lowered. But Lockley sent it up the brand-new highway as fast as it would go. Now the highway followed a broad valley with a meadow-like floor. Now it seemed to pick its way between cliffs, and on occasion it ran over a concrete bridge spanning some swiftly flowing stream. At least once it went through a cut which might as well have been a tunnel, and the crackling...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1184
On the morning the radar reported something odd out in space, Lockley awoke at about twenty minutes to eight. That was usual. He'd slept in a sleeping bag on a mountain-flank with other mountains all around. That was not unprecedented. He was there to make a base line measurement for a detailed map of the Boulder Lake National Park, whose facilities were now being built. Measuring a base line, even with the newest of electronic apparatus, was more or less a commonplace job for Lockley. This morning, though, he woke and realized gloomily that he'd dreamed about Jill Holmes again, which...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2570
Chapter XIIHoddan stopped off at Krim by landing grid, to consult his lawyers. He felt a certain amount of hope of good results from his raid on Walden, but he was desperate about Nedda. Once she was confident of her safety under his protection, she took over the operation of the spaceship. She displayed an overwhelming saccharinity that was appalling. She was sweetness and light among criminals who respectfully did not harm her, and she sweetened and lightened the atmosphere of the space yacht until Hoddan's followers were close to mutiny. "It ain't that I mind her being a nice girl,"...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1231
Chapter XIThere was a disturbing air which was shared by all the members of Hoddan's crew, on the way to Walden. It was not exactly reluctance, because there was self-evident enthusiasm over the idea of making a pirate voyage under him. So far as past enterprises were concerned, Hoddan as a leader was the answer to a Darthian gentleman's prayer. The partial looting of Ghek's castle, alone, would have made him a desirable leader. But a crew of seven, returned from space, had displayed currency which amounted to the wealth of fabled Ind. Nobody knew what Ind was, any longer, but...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1515
Chapter XIt is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned. Hoddan went skyward in the spaceboat with feelings of warm gratitude toward the Lady Fani. He had not the slightest inkling that she, who had twice spoiled her father's skulduggery so far as it affected him, felt any but the friendliest of feelings toward him. He remembered that he had kept her from the necessity of adjusting to matrimony with the Lord Ghek. It did not occur to him that most girls intend to adjust to marriage with somebody, anyhow, and he did not even...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2571
Chapter IXNormally, at overdrive cruising speed, it would be a week's journey from Walden to the planet Krim. Hoddan made it in five days. There was reason. He wanted to beat the news of his piracy to Krim. He could endure suspicion, and he wouldn't mind doubt, but he did not want certainty of his nefarious behavior to interfere with the purposes of his call. The space yacht, sealed tightly, floated in an orbit far out in emptiness. The big ship went down alone by landing grid. It glittered brightly as it descended. When it touched ground and the grid's force...
Long Stories - Post by : Bizmakers - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1449
Chapter VIWhen frantic bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the communicator headphones, and until he heard his name called tried drearily to make sense of them. But suddenly he opened his eyes. Somebody banged on the door once more. A voice cried angrily: "Bron Hoddan! Wake up or I'll go away and let whatever happens to you happen! Wake up!" It was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant and tearful and solicitous and angry. He rolled out of bed and found himself dressed. He hadn't slept the...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2269
Chapter VHoddan swore from the depths of a very considerable vocabulary. "You (censored)--(deleted)--(omitted)--(unprintability)", he roared. "Get back up on your horse or I blast you and leave you for Ghek's men to handle when they're able to move about again! Get back on that horse! One--two--" The man got back on the horse. "Now go on ahead," rasped Hoddan. "All of you! I'm going to count you!" The dozen horsemen from Don Loris' stronghold rode reluctantly on ahead. He did count them. He rode on, shepherding them before him. "Ghek," he told them in a blood-curdling tone, "has a bigger prize...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1694
Chapter IVAccording to the fiction tapes, the colonized worlds of the galaxy vary wildly from each other. In cold and unromantic fact, it isn't so. Space travel is too cheap and sol-type solar systems too numerous to justify the settlement of hostile worlds. There's no point in trying to live where one has to put on special equipment every time he goes outdoors. There's no reason to settle on a world where one can't grow the kind of vegetation one's ancestors adapted themselves to some tens of thousands of generations ago. It simply doesn't make sense! So the inhabited worlds of...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1022
Chapter IIIWhen dawn broke over the capital city of Walden, the sight was appropriately glamorous. There were shining towers and curving tree-bordered ways, above which innumerable small birds flew tumultuously. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by high-pitched chirpings everywhere. During the darkness there had been a deep-toned humming sound, audible all over the city. That was the landing grid in operation out at the spaceport, letting down a twenty-thousand-ton liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coalsack Stars, and if Hoddan was lucky he would be on it. But...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 1928
Chapter IIIn something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's office. He'd been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him soothed by ointments. But, more important, he'd worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view. He'd been a misfit at home on Zan because he was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life of a member of a space-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket-ships, to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 3592
Chapter ISometimes it seems nobody loves a benefactor ... particularly nobody on a well-heeled, self-satisfied planet. Grandpa always said Pirates were really benefactors, though....It was not mere impulsive action when Bron Hoddan started for the planet Walden by stowing away on a ship that had come to his native planet to hang all his relatives. He'd planned it long before. It was a long-cherished and carefully worked out scheme. He didn't expect the hanging of his relatives, of course. He knew that they'd act grieved and innocent, and give proof that they were simple people leading blameless lives. They'd make their...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2198
On the day of the take-off there were a number of curious side-effects from the completion of the Space Platform. There was a very small country on the other side of the world which determined desperately to risk its existence on the success of the Platform's flight. It had to choose between abject submission to a powerful neighbor, or the possibility of a revolution in which its neighbor's troops would take on the semblance of citizens for street-fighting purposes. If the Platform got aloft, it could defy its neighbor. And in a grim gamble, it did. There was also a last-ditch...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2377
The incoming shift had a messy clean-up job to do. It was accomplished only because security men abruptly took over the work of gang bosses, and all ordinary labor on the Platform was put aside until normal operations were again possible. Even that would not have been feasible but for the walkie-talkies the security men wore. As the situation was sorted out, it was explained to them, and they relayed the news for the satisfaction of the curiosity of those who worked under them. No work--no explanation. It produced immediate and satisfactory co-operation all around. There had been four separate and...
Long Stories - Post by : ANDROIDTECH - Date : May 2012 - Author : Murray Leinster - Read : 2268
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Operation Terror - Chapter 10
