Search Worlds Without End

Contents:

• 5 - Secret of the Black Planet - [John Hastings] - (1952) - novella by Milton Lesser
• 81 - Son of the Black Chalice - [John Hastings] - (1952) - novella by Milton Lesser

"We'll thunder off to Io,
Out in the Jovian Moons.
We'll feast our eyes and seek the skies
And plunder Martian ruins!"

The "Spaceman's Chant" turned from a spirited to a heartbreaking refrain when Cadet Peter Hodges learned that he would never be allowed to "thunder off to Io."

Bitter disappointment, to a youth whose father had been one of the first space captains, motivates this gripping tale of the future. Studded with detail of the spaceports, ships and men that handle interplanetary flight, Earthbound is the very human drama of a disillusioned cadet forced by circumstances to help plunder the very space liners he was trained to protect.

How Pete Hodges became involved with interplanetary racketeers, his dramatic escape, his flight to the asteroids on a mission the authorities knew could not succed, is a finely wrought drama that only an author of Milton Lesser's stature could write. Fired with suspense and action, this story of one young man's determination to face the speckled blackness of outer space is science fiction at its best!

When the moonship "Tycho III" comes into the landing pit at the New Mexico Spaceport, Andy Marlow has his first look in more than a year at the planet Earth. Instead of proud launching gantries and gleaming ships, he sees empty firing pits and the broken hulks of a few old spacetubs. Earth's brief two hundred years in space is now past history; man has been exiled for a violation of inter-galactic law.

A short time after landing, Andy and his best friend despondently accept a mysterious job offer that takes them to a secret spaceport deep in the jungles of Central America. Here a ruthless ex-space captain, Reed Ballinger, plans to blast his way back into the galaxy.

Andy, torn between loyalty to his friend and a growing awareness that Ballinger's way means war, finally flees the spaceport. He joins Project Nobel, a brilliant and dangerous scheme to thwart Ballinger and to convince the Star Brain, the machine that rules the galaxy, that Earth deserves to regain its place in space.

En route to the Center of the Galaxy for the Interstellar Olympic Games, the HELLAS, carrying Earth's team, intercepts a mysterious space ship, apparently derelict. Steve Frazer, champion spacesuit racer, volunteers to investigate.

Once aboard, he discovers astonishing evidence of an intelligent nonhuman race that can speak by telepathy and disappear at will - a race superior in some ways to human beings. Stunned, Steve returns to the HELLAS to find that no one believes his startling story.

His attempts to prove that he is telling the truth plunge Steve quickly into the midst of interstellar conflict and intrigue. Disqualified from the Games on a trumped-up charge, Steve soon realizes that someone very powerful thinks he knows too much.

Tightly written and intensely dramatic, the story sweeps to the outermost reaches of the galaxy. Its picture of the Games with their brilliant color and keen competition is entirely new to the pages of science fiction.

The Plot Against Earth

NEVER FOLLOW A FALLING STAR!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Interworld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn't take Catton long to realize that the hypnojewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery

Recruit for Andromeda

Many had gone - none had returned.

When man tackles the first really long journey - across twenty-six trillion miles of uncharted space - to the nearest star, it will take him two hundred years to complete the flight. Not until the sixth generation nears maturity will the starship reach its destination. Around this fascinating theme, Milton Lesser has woven a tale of the first starship's final days of flight. He pictures the ship as a hollowed-out meteorite composed of four concentric circles - a world in which civilization has deteriorated and superstition risen to a high pitch, making those within unaware of the fact that they are traveling through space or that their journey is destined to end.

All Mikal knew when he embarked on the "Journey of the Four Circles" was that every eighteen-year-old from Astrosphere, the outermost circle, must visit each of the other circles if he hoped to become an Enginer. But before he completed his trip, he unearthed startling truths that threw the four circles into a state of chaos. Gradually Mikal discovered that unless the people of the four circles took immediate action the ship was doomed to crash. Mikal's desperate efforts to unite the four circles in order to save their world is a story of rising tension and clashing interests.

Not only is this a tale of man's triumph over the barriers of space, but a fabulously exciting epic of civilization's victory over superstition and complacency. With subtle satire the author has written one of the most realistic and unforgettable stories ever to appear in the science fiction field.

Contents:

• 5 - "A" as in Android - (1951) - shortstory
• 19 - Voices in the Void - (1951) - novelette
• 49 - The Double Occupation - (1955) - novelette
• 89 - No-Risk Planet - (1955) - novelette
• 111 - The Music of the Spheres - (1956) - shortstory
• 124 - Code of the Bluster World - (1956) - shortstory
• 142 - All Flesh Is Brass - (1952) - shortstory
• 155 - It's Raining Frogs - shortfiction
• 188 - Anything Your Heart Desires - (1951) - shortstory
• 204 - Black Eyes and the Daily Grind - (1952) - shortstory
• 222 - The Impossible Weapon - (1952) - shortstory
• 240 - From Hidden Worlds - (1951) - novelette
• 277 - Pen Pal - (1951) - shortstory
• 295 - My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon - (1956) - shortstory

Contents:

• 4 - My Name Is Mayhem - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1955) - novelette
• 24 - They Sent a Boy - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1955) - novelette
• 39 - The Burning Man - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1956) - novelette
• 52 - Magellan Was a Piker - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1956) - novelette
• 66 - This Planet Is Mine - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1956) - novelette
• 89 - A Place in the Sun - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1956) - novelette
• 103 - Think Yourself to Death - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1957) - novelette
• 116 - Get Out of My World - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1957) - novelette
• 133 - A Coward Named Mayhem - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1958) - short story
• 145 - Mayhem Enslaved - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1958) - novelette
• 159 - World Beyond Pluto - [Johnny Mayhem] - (1958) - short story