Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• Agent of Vega - (1949) - novella
• The Illusionists - (1951) - novella
• The Truth About Cushgar - (1950) - novelette
• The Second Night of Summer - (1950) - novelette

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in If, July 1965. It is included in the Van Vogt collection More Than Superhuman (1971).

Contents:

• Grandpa
• Lion Loose
• Just Curious
• The Second Night of Summer
• Novice
• Balanced Ecology
• The Custodians
• Sour Note on Palayata
• Goblin Night

Earth's colonists have divided into the Swimmers, who spend their entire lives in zero-gravity and claim to be the next step in evolution, and the planet-dwelling Walkers. The Swimmers regard those who prefer to live on the surface of a planet as little better than unevolved apes, while the Walkers are not about to say farewell to the planets they grew up on, and think the Swimmers are not advanced at all, but merely deranged. Crowell, born a Swimmer but now a Walker by choice, is caught in the middle as the two sides prepare for war. Then he discovers the true cause of the altercation: a hidden alien race trying to provoke a war of extinction.

Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous! Pausert thought he had made good with his battered starship, successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes no one else could sell. And then he made the mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). No good deed goes unpunished, and those harmless-looking young ladies were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres.

MEET TELZEY AMBERDON - SHE'S NOBODY'S TOY

Telzey Amberdon was only in her teens when she discovered that she was a telepath. Not only a telepath, but a xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally not just with humans, but with alien intelligences. And she turned out to be one of the most powerful telepaths in the history of the galactic civilization called the Hub.

First she had to deal with an alien race that humans hadn't realized were intelligent, and who were about to eliminate those troublesome humans who thought they were colonizing an uninhabited world. Then, she had to fend off the secret psi agents of the Psychological Corps who took a dim view of any telepath, let alone one with Telzey's powers, operating outside of their control. Next, she stumbled across a telepathic serial killer, who used an unstoppable predator, under his mental control, to hunt and kill his victims-and Telzey was to be the catch of the day.

It was fortunate for the human race that she survived, since she next found herself in the middle of a secret war between two hidden races of genetically engineered humans. They called it the "Lion Game," and they made the mistake of thinking that in this clash of predators, Telzey was just a harmless kitten. But when the dust settled, Telzey would be the only one purring....

Table of Contents:

• Novice - (1962) - novelette
• Undercurrents - (1964) - novella
• Poltergeist - (1971) - short story
• Goblin Night - (1965) - novelette
• Sleep No More - (1965) - short story
• The Lion Game - (1971) - novella
• Blood of Nalakia - (1953) - novelette
• The Star Hyacinths - (1961) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• The Federation of the Hub: An Overview - essay by Guy Gordon

THEY'RE DYNAMITE

Telzey Amberdon is one of the most powerful xenotelepaths in the known galaxy. Trigger Argee is a crack shot, with reflexes that make lightning look lethargic, and also a top agent of the galaxy's Federation of the Hub. Separately, they have been making life miserable for human criminals, unfriendly aliens, and nefarious members of all species. But when a danger to the entire Hub civilization brought these two together, the galaxy would never be the same!

Table of Contents:

• Company Planet - (1971) - novelette
• Resident Witch - (1970) - novelette
• The Pork Chop Tree - (1965) - short story
• Compulsion - (1970) - novelette
• Glory Day - (1971) - novelette
• Child of the Gods - (1972) - novelette
• Ti's Toys - (1971) - novella
• The Symbiotes - (1972) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• That Certain Something - essay by Guy Gordon

IF BUREAUCRACIES HAD STARSHIPS

Con games Corrupt governors. Deadly rivalries between departments of the same government. And, of course, the long arm of the Mob. Even in our future among the stars, some things never change-except that the governors run (and ruin) planets, the rivalries are fought with spacecraft and energy bolts, and the mobsters smuggle real illegal aliens and make their getaways with subspace portals. It's all just another day in that bastion of galactic peace and democracy, the Federation of the Hub

-and somebody has to clean up this mess!

Join secret agent Trigger Argee, scout adventurer Heslet Quillan and Holati Tate, master of intrigue, as they battle the criminal element on its own interstellar turf... and make the future a little safer for the rest of us.

Table of Contents:

• Harvest Time - (1958) - novelette
• Lion Loose - (1961) - novella
• Aura of Immortality - (1974) - short story
• Forget It - (1965) - novelette
• Legacy - (1962) - novel
• Sour Note on Palayata - (1956) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• The Psychology Service: Immune System of the Hub - essay by Guy Gordon

THE HUB IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE - BUT SO ARE ITS CITIZENS.

The Federation of the Hub: thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds with only the subtlest of interstellar governments holding them all together. Stable at last after centuries of war, the Hub is now prime real estate ... making it a merciless arena for the conflicting schemes of criminals, unscrupulous corporations, and invaders from beyond the edges of Federation space.

But the Hub is well-defended, and not only by professional heroes such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. In Hub Space a citizen is expected to stand up for herself, blaster in hand, as needs must; so when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it....

Table of Contents:

• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - short story
• A Nice Day for Screaming - (1965) - short story
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Machmen - (1964) - short story
• The Other Likeness - (1962) - short story
• Attitudes - (1969) - novelette
• Trouble Tide - (1965) - novelette
• The Demon Breed - (1968) - novel
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• Recurring Characters in the Hub Series - essay by Guy Gordon

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fact - Science Fiction, March 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Award Stories 1965 (1966), edited by Damon Knight, Analog 5 (1967), edited by John W. Campbell and The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990, (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. It is included in the collection Nice Day for Screaming, and Other Tales of the Hub (1965), The Best of James H. Schmitz (1991) and The Hub: Dangerous Territory (2001).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Hugo Award nominated story.

The most dangerous of animals is not the biggest and fiercest--but the one that's hardest to stop. Add intelligence to that ... and you may come to a wrong conclusion as to what the worst menace is....

It originally appeared in Analog Science Fact -> Fiction, October 1961. The story can also be found in the collections A Pride of Monsters (1970), The Best of James H. Schmitz (1990) and Trigger & Friends: The Complete Federation of the Hub: Volume 3 (2001).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, February 1965. The story can also be found in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and the collection Trigger & Friends: The Complete Federation of the Hub: Volume 3 (2001).

Centuries in the Future, when Earth has been all but forgotten. some of humanity's star-flung descendants struggle to master the Plasmoids, strange and alarming life-forms with robotlike traits.

Table of Contents:

• A Nice Day for Screaming - (1965) - shortstory
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Other Likeness - (1962) - shortstory
• The Tangled Web - (1961) - novelette
• The Machmen - (1964) - shortstory
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - shortstory

It's the story of one young woman, trapped on an island where the invading Parahuans are preparing to take over the planet, her only allies three mutated and intelligent otters. Her problem is to stay alive long enough to get a message away from the island to the rest of the population and the warships of the Federation.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by James H. Schmitz
• Lion Loose - (1961) - novella
• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Pork Chop Tree - (1965) - shortstory
• Greenface - (1943) - novelette

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact, April 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies On Our Way to the Future (1970), edited by Terry Carr and The World Turned Upside Down (2005) edited by Eric Flint, Jim Baen and David Drake. It is included in the collections The Best of James H. Schmitz and Telzey Amberdon (2000).

Telzey Amberdon, at age 15, had enormously developed psionic powers. She could read, as well as change, human minds! In part I, she enjoys an extraordinary telepathic rapport with a feline non-human.

Then her dreams become nightmares dominated by a weird "psionic traffic cop," and she realizes that further exercise of her powers could lead to trouble. Somehow, the interstellar government had found out about her, and had planted that "cop" in her mind to destroy her.

Expansion of 2 previously published stories - "Novice" (1962) and "Undercurrents" (1964).

The future of earth and control of the universe is at stake when a highly intelligent fifteen-year-old becomes involved in a game played by her protean kidnappers.

Expansion of 3 previously published stories - "Goblin Night" (1965), "Sleep No More" (1965), and "The Lion Game" (1971).

Table of Contents:

• Company Planet
• Compulsion
• Resident Witch
• The Telzey Toy