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Star pilot Woody Pearsall's return home to Earth had suddenly become a nightmare. His wife, his commander, even the base records all said he'd been dead for over five years. The Skip Drive which had made interstellar flight possible had an unexpected side effect--shifting him to an alternate Earth!

Time travel, reincarnation, and out-of-body experiences are just three of the adventures in these 24 tales by the author of the Rissa Kerguelen saga and Zelda M'Tana.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1987) - essay
• A Gun for Grandfather - (1957) - short story
• Of Mice and Otis - (1972) - short story
• The Puiss of Krrlik - (1972) - short story
• The Absence of Tom Leone - (1987) - short story
• Proof - (1972) - short story
• The Real World - (1972) - short story
• Tell Me All About Yourself - (1973) - short story
• Once Upon a Unicorn - (1973) - short story
• Road Map - (1973) - short story
• If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy - (1974) - novelette
• Three Tinks on the House - (1973) - short story
• The Learning of Eeshta - (1973) - short story
• I'm Going to Get You - (1974) - short story
• 2000½ - A Spaced Oddity - (1973) - short story
• Time of Need - (1974) - short story
• Retroflex - (1974) - short story
• Misconception - (1975) - short story
• The Signing of Tulip - (1975) - short story
• Advantage - (1975) - short story
• Getting Home - (1974) - novelette

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Universe 5 (1974), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthology Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Fourth Annual Collection (1974), edited by Lester del Rey. It is included in the collection Getting Home (1987). A chapbook editon appeared in 1992.

Transported through time to an earth of the distant future, Luke Tabor discovers that a genetic disaster has led to overbreeding, and he is coveted to enhance the earth's weakening gene pool.

The Mark Twos were a breed apart, similar to other humans in every way but one: a survival adaptation different from any seen before. When it was discovered how remarkable that adaptation was, the implications were staggering...Because in a world where fear and suspicion reigned, where disease limited population growth, and where survival of the human race depended on a cure for that disease, the Mark Twos were the answer: not a cure, but a new kind of humanity.

Here is the extraordinary story of Humanity Mark Two's struggle for survival in the fearful, suspicious world. With vivid, fast-moving prose, F.M. Busby unfolds the adventure of Humanity's confrontation with its own startling future

Someone will stop at nothing--even murder--to thwart the spread of the matter transmitter, a new invention that threatens to transform the world--if it is not a hoax.

An omnibus edition of three novels and one short story.

Contents:

• Cage a Man
• The Learning of Eeshta (short story)
• The Proud Enemy
• End of the Line (this novel was never published separately)

He awoke to find himself lying naked among fifty sleeping bodies. The walls were grey... also the floor and ceiling. There were no exits anywhere.

This was to become his world. This and the Demu--the silent watchers, prodding, manipulating, chaining his mind.

His mind screamed "I will not be caged!" Then he began to plan his escape. For Barton there was a world to protect, vengeance to take. But the Demu were powerful enemies.

And if Barton failed, the Demu would make Earth pay the price...

Second book in the Demu trilogy. No synopsis available.

At thirteen, Bran Tregare was stripped of his home, his name and his family, and sent to the brutal space academy known as the Slaughterhouse.

At seventeen, he'd survived the sadistic discipline of a starcaptain called the Butcher to become an ace pilot, crack gunner and hardened killer.

At twenty, he escaped with an armed warship to begin a one-man war against Earth's imperial masters.

The Saga of Bran and Rissa Continues

Their victory over the Imperial tyranny of United Energy and Transport complete, Bran Tregare and Rissa Kerguelen set out to aid the Shrakken aliens in their war against the telepathic killers called the Tsa. But on route to battle, the Tsa attacked, and Bran and Rissa's scoutship crashed on the wilderness world of Shaarbant.

Leaderless, their starship's crew fought the Tsa with an untested, time-twisting stardrive, while Bran, Rissa and their daughter Lisele faced an equally desperate struggle for survival on a perilous and primitive planet.

VENGEANCE OF THE REBEL

At the age of twenty-one, Bran Tregare was the deadliest enemy United Energy and Transport had ever faced. Driven by vengeance, he'd escaped with an armed warship to rally the rebel forces against the brutal empire that held Earth in its grasp.

Obsessed with UET's destruction, Tregare sacrificed everything to reach his goal - including his own humanity. Then he met Rissa Kerguelen, a woman as strong and dedicated as he, who challenged him to confront his haunted past, and joined him in the fight for humanity's future.

To prepare their young daughter Lisele for her role as heir to the Hulzein dynasty, Bran Tregare and Rissa Kerguelen send her on an important diplomatic mission.

But a strange gravitational anomaly strands the crew of the March Hare in orbit around a lost colony where the barbaric remnants of UET still maintain a reign of fear.

Lisele is forced to grow up quickly and call upon all her Hulzein training to try to save her ship from destruction.

At five, they slaughtered her parents and doomed her to slavery. At seventeen, she was an exhile from Earth, learning new and forbidden worlds. At eighteen she commanded an army in space.

As the ship lifted off, Rissa breathed a sigh of relief. No one had recognized the scientifically-altered being as the beautiful young heir to the Hulzein Establishment--the only force able to challenge the tyranny that held the Earth, and all the Universe, in thrall.

At five, they slaughtered her parents and doomed her to slavery.

At seventeen, she was an exile from Earth, learning new and forbidden worlds.

At eighteen, she commanded an army in space.

The final battle draws near. While Earth groans under the tyranny of UET, the armada commanded by Rissa and Treegare approaches from deep space. This is Risa's finest hours. She has returned to claim her destiny.

Living a desperate life in the Total Welfare Center, the orphan Rissa discovers she has won the lottery and takes a chance to shape her own destiny. After she escapes from Earth with the help of a space pirate who may be more trouble than she expected, she soon discovers that together they might have a chance to shape Earth's destiny as well.