Search Worlds Without End

The time might well be today in this intriguing science fiction tale in which the vagaries of weather open the door to an unknown civilization from the past—or is it the future?

Across the globe a new ice age is encroaching. From Alberta to Ontario most of Canada is deserted, its people resettled in the southern United States and Mexico, while mile by mile, century by century, the glacier grinds down their former homes.

Fisher Yann Highsmith is a scientist stationed, with a few colleagues, on the edge of the ice field, recording its relentless growth and the destruction of life in its path. In the midst of this barren landscape the team recovers a weird assortment of artifacts that seem to appear suddenly out of thin air, and Highsmith fits them together into a fantastic theory of another dimension. Then the search parties begin to find bodies out of time and place and Highsmith’s history of parallel worlds becomes a chilling reality.

The astonishing adventure of the only free man in a dangerous world of women!

Having died during Roosevelt's administration, Owen Hall reawakens in a strange world inhabited by women wardens and the zombie-like male workers they control.

Table of Contents:

• 10 - To the Tombaugh Station - (1960) - novella
• 60 - To a Ripe Old Age - (1952) - short story
• 78 - King of the Planet - (1959) - short story
• 94 - Exit - (1943) - short story
• 106 - The Tourist Trade - (1951) - short story
• 118 - My Brother's Wife - (1951) - short story
• 132 - The Job Is Ended - (1950) - novelette
• 156 - Able to Zebra - (1953) - short story
• 174 - Time Exposures - (1971) - novelette

Sent back in time to record a speech by Abraham Lincoln, Ben Steward learns that he has been transported twice--on two consecutive days--and that his double still exists in the same time zone.

The Wrong Side of the River

Corporal Russell Gary -- operator -- angle man -- black-marketeer, juniot grade -- liberator of anything loose -- veteran of Salerno and Normandy -- a man who knew how to live by his wits and a gun.

Celebrating tne years in khaki Gary went on a monumental binge...

While he slept it off, the United States east of the Mississippi was laid waste by atomic bombs and plague germs. the few who survived were imune to the plague but carriers of the toxin. No one from the contaminated are crossed the Mississippe and lived more than a few seconds. the Army guarded every bridge, every inc of shore line. If you happened to be East fo the river when the bombs fell, you stayed there ntil you died. There was no other choice, no other future.

When Corporal Gary woke up he was on the wrong side of the river, the bombed and comtaminated side...

Table of Contents:

• ix - Introduction (The Science-Fiction Subtreasury) - essay
• 1 - The Street Walker - short story
• 23 - "MCMLV" - (1954) - short story
• 49 - Home Is Where the Wreck Is - (1954) - short story
• 77 - My Brother's Wife - (1951) - short story
• 101 - Gentlemen--The Queen! - (1942) - short story
• 129 - The Job Is Ended - (1950) - novelette
• 169 - Exit - (1943) - short story
• 189 - The Wayfaring Strangers - (1952) - short story
• 201 - Able to Zebra - (1953) - short story
• 231 - The Mountaineer - (1953) - short story

Was his spaceship haunted - or only booby-trapped?

This novel was expanded from a novella published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1960. It is half on Ace Double D-479 (1960).

Paul Breen discovers that he has special powers. As a loyal American he lends his powers to the U.S. government but soon finds out that the government is not to be trusted.

It was a top secret government project, its funds coming quietly from the Bureau of Standards, its orders directly from the President. The project's goal was to survey the future.

The survey would be made in person, by use of the newly-developed Time Displacement Vehicle. Three specially trained men would be sent to the year 2000, and they would return with invaluable data about the problems to be faced by the government in decades to come.

It seemed almost routine at first. But when the survey team reached their target they found a savage land... an awesome world they may have made, and they had to wonder if any would return to tell about it.

To the Tombaugh Station

Was his spaceship haunted - or only booby-trapped?

Earthman, Go Home!

Published as an Ace Double book (1960), cover code D-479, two short novels. Cover art by Ed Emshwiller , Ed Valigursky. "To The Tombaugh Station" was first published in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction," July 1960. "Earthman, Go Home!" is part of Anderson's "Ensign Flandry" series, and was serialized in Fantastic Stories (December 1960, January 1961) under the title "A Plague of Masters."

This novella is also part of Flandry of Terra (Dominic Flandry #6) as "The Plague of Masters".

His first sf novel, The City in the Sea (1951), deals with a matriarchal culture which begins to re-invade a USA reverted to savagery.

In Knoxville, Tennessee, the men involved in the top-secret Ridgerunner project are about to complete work on the first rocket designed to probe beyond the solar system and Secret Service agents in that city are becomming frantic over the presence of one Gilbert Nash, a man without a past.

The investigation of Nash began wen it was discovered that he subscribed to every journal of science currently published in the free world -- archeology, geology, astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, medicine, and most distrubing of all, nuclear physics. Was he merely shogin a healthy interest in science, or perhaps something more sinister? Determined to find out, the government agents are soon plunged into the most baffling and frustrating case of an of their careers.

Every fact they uncover only adds to the mystery surrounding Nash's identity. He seems to have come into existence our of nowhere on March 8th, 1940, the date the United States decide in earnest to build an atomic bomb, and them migrated to Knoxville just in advance of the establishement of the Ridgerunner project. On the door to his office appear anly his name and the word "investigations." And, although Nash fave his age as 31 in 1940, he appears no to have aged a day since that time.

THE BOMBINGS FORMED A STRANGE, INEXORABLE PATTERN-

Each explosion came on a rainy night
Each was related to the others
Each struck in a "restricted" area
Each was directed at a leader of a fanatic organization, misnamed "Sons of America"
Each was fatal
And each left no clues!

Without clues, you can catch a killer only one way: at the scene of the crime. But how can you stop a criminal who moves through time and space to murder his victims --- completely and irrevocably --- days before the moment of actual death?