...He heard a shout, distant and ringing, "No, Carson! Not that door!" Something green writhed in through that door. Something gaseous, billowing, filling the chamber faster and faster, something that caught at his throat and gagged him, made him wretch, brought streaming tears to his eyes. Before his eyes stretched a nightmarish growth of vine and tree, of mushroom-headed stalks, of gyrating tentacles swaying from every branch and limb. He heard a shrill, triumphant chittering. He turned to spring back. A vice closed over his foot and tripped him. He fell, sprawling, his mouth and nostrils filling with stinking mud. He did not remember anything more for a very long time.
Keston Ochiltree's visit home had been short and disastrous. His newborn nephew had proved to be one of the Hopeless Ones and had only served to remind him of the present plight of mankind. Keston knew that the decision he was being called on to make might mean a new start for humanity or the end of their underwater civilization. Each day found more Hopeless Ones being born: pitiful creatures with webbed hands and feet. More important, the inhuman Zammu were pressing their attack in a fierce struggle between species. Most important, the silver sky was lowering. The shimmering sky-level would soon shrink until they had all burned in the gaseous beyond. So Keston's decision might mean everything. Should he stay in the Emperor's shark-cavalry to fight the Zammu? Or should he join Professor Lansing in an illegal attempt to find what lay beyond the silver sky?
Terran Corps scattered their ships outward into the glittering galaxies. Solterra's prime objective: orbital reconstruction of the far-flung planets. They had tightened up Solterra's galaxy and had made mankind secure against alien threats - or so Terrans believed. As Chief Commander, Stephen Strang aggressively explored the cosmos for the glory of his beloved Earth. He could boast that he had moved more planets into orbit around Sol than any other. Strang felt smugly safe against alien "sharks" - until he discovered the vast time-bomb that was planet Vesta's core. . .
This is the story of one member of the Terran Survey Corps. His name is Loftus Tait. There are many men of his stamp in the Corps; men who possess a deep and unshakable conviction that what they are doing has a meaning in face of the great unknowns, men who, recognising the transience and minuteness of humankind, yet believe that Man has a destiny among the stars. Not for him or his crew was there the refinement and luxury of a base ship equipped like a small world; they took their frail craft across the parsecs and set down as and when they could, and worked at their jobs, and came back - if they were lucky. Some were not so lucky.
A mind-shaking glimpse into the future of the earth: a brilliantly imagined, horrifyingly plausible glimpse into a world where the social elite, the Uppers, live in absolute luxury, boosting themselves with 'Joy Juice'. The 'Joy Juice' is the vital life fluid extracted from the workers, the second class citizens whose life is a constant search for and movement from one trip, one hallucination to the next. It is only when the workers are tripping that the Uppers can extract the 'Joy Juice'. But what happens when the good trips turn into bad ones? When pleasant dreams become nightmares?
For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man's spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory - the secret of ZI. Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew ZI's secret.
Matthew Wade had been a coord, one of the mysterious chosen ones, who through the powers unknown to the rest of mankind, ruled over the known galaxy. But Wade fled the overwhelming responsibility of his exalted caste and went into hiding on the symb-socket circuit. The symb-socketeers were the migrant workers of the galaxy. Traveling from planet to planet, they worked for play and played for a living. Matthew Wade adopted the freewheeling, ever-changing life hoping to evade the bailiffs of Altimus, the home planet of the cords, knowing that they would never rest until they had tracked down the renegade. And then Wade took service on the plant of Ashramdrego, and was faced with the most important decision of his life - would he let an entire planet be destroyed rather than reveal his true identity?
Visa for an enigma. When John Carter came to the Horakah Cluster, it was in the guise of an interstellar salesman. If anyone there suspected he was more than that, it would mean his instant execution. But Carter's unusual personality made it possible for him to put over the deception and even gain a visa to the forbidden central planet, an arsenal of space war factories. Of course, had to make some special deals to do it, and those proved his undoing. For he found himself caught between two menaces: the tyrannical militaristic moguls and a fantastically greater threat fro beyond the ends of space.
White Flag for Earthmen Man had discovered a means of colonising the galaxy. Through a system of instantaneous matter transmission, men, machines, anything, could be sent light years away in seconds! Only, men were not the only beings in the galaxy who were expanding, and at 200 light years from Earth the alien Gershmi people made their claims clear, with guns! It would have been a fair fight between equally matched races, had not the very matter transmitter boxes which had made mankind's expansion possible, suddenly began to put men back together, 200 light years from Earth, with their will to fight removes, so that Earthmen were marching with white flags of truce straight into Gershmi fire!
At last as they reached out through the ghostly transparencies of the galaxy the men from Earth encountered an alien race completely non-human in appearance. They were the real aliens. Their physiology differed gruesomely from Terrans' - could men hope their psychology would not? The Unknown Non Human Aliens - the Unha - replied to peace overtures with immediate hostility. So, reluctantly, the men from Earth forged a weapon of awesome power. Created out of the shattered bodies of men and women - men like Siegfried Ritter, Giuseppe Tozzi and Eugene Valois - Blazon set fire to the Galaxy. For Doctor Marjorie Rothwell the existence of Blazon challenged the basic assumptions forced on humanity by alien intransigence; but the action-packed story of Blazon does more than explore the running sore of human aggression in its understanding of human sacrifice.
Two rival sorcerers cast their spells as flames rise above Dreaming Ferranoz, capital of the bright empire of Akkar. Half-human wolflings devour citizens. The conflicting spells meet - and paralyze the city. No one moves, even to breathe. Time stands still. The pall of smoke hangs motionless over unflickering fires. Outside the city walls, Kandar, prince of Ferranoz, learns that he might save his people - if he can uncover the infamous Trilogy of the Damned, the books of sorcery in whose pages is locked the secret incantation that can free Ferranoz.
On the gold-symbol world of Beresford's Planet, Richard Kirby lived in total luxury. As a member of "The Set" his life was a never-ending round of planetary party-hopping. The only restriction imposed on him - that he never put down on any world marked with a red or black symbol - was something that he had always accepted without question. That is, until his brother Alec was murdered in cold blood! Alec had been an undercover agent to those forbidden planets, and in order to avenge him, Kirby had to find out for himself what was really happening there. But with the start of his investigation, Kirby found out quickly that the authorities meant business when they said "Hands off!" The secret they were protecting was of vital importance, and it now became a matter of life and death, not only to Kirby, but to all the inhabitants of THE CHANGELING WORLDS.
Parsloe's Planet was in its death throes. A world of mobile cities, the populace had moved frantically from radiation site to radiation site - for without this life-giving radiation the inevitable result would be insanity and death. Now the radiation was failing. Soon it would be no more. The planet was going to die. But into the chaos and agony of the dying planet comes Douglas Marsden: an outcast, a renegade - and the only man who can save the stricken world.
Mytilene," he told them, "is a pleasure world. Or, rather, I should say worlds. You can fly from any planet to any other in the atmosphere. "The whole ball, which is much larger than Jupiter, is held together by electromagnetic forces created and maintained by the machines and the robot brains on the centre planet - which spins of itself, but does not move within the gaseous envelope.
It is an age of omnipotent machines; of a vast, megalopolis with hover-cars tied into an electronic traffic control, pedways and monorails... It is an age, too, of ultimate detectives. Robin Carver was one of the best on Ridforce. Connecting with the dying brains of murder victims, reliving their last moments, fingering the killers for the police was his job, and he did it well. But the sudden wave of murders had shaken him to the core. A man could work with death for just so long - then something had to give...
Gigantic were The Demons who terrorized the underground kingdom of Archon. Yet, who were they? Whence came their fantastic power? Why did they wage ruthless and relentless war against Archon? These were questions to which there was no answer until Stead arrived in Archon, apparently from nowhere. Only after he had been a Forager for some months, and had experienced the spine-chilling dangers of The Outside did Stead arrive at a solution. Even then he had a difficult task convincing the Controllers, who, for generations, had insulated themselves against the harsh truth. Only those who had actually seen The Outside - the Foragers, Soldiers and Workers - could properly understand.
Harry Blakey remembered a childhood secret - that there was a room under his folks' home which crossed into another world. When, finally as a war veteran, he came back to the old house, he investigated - and found his memory was true. There were indeed other Earths and other civilisations and adventures to be had - at great risks. For when he enlisted in the special commando corps organised to stop the interdimensional warfare, he came up against the terrifying hordes of the Diamond Contessa. She had looted many Earths and her hunger was always increasing. No mere human heroics would wrest the keys of the world away from her - not white her army of monsters held a dozen civilisations in thrall!
Delilah was beautiful. Delilah was sexy. And Delilah was to blame for all of Ferdie Foxlee's problems. She had let him down at the crucial moment by falling apart. Literally. And in pieces. Her right eye popped, dangling on multicoloured cables. Her right breast spun around and flew off into the distance. As her fuses blew, her smile melted in a blaze of sparks. As an expert in ectoplasmic electronic creations, Ferdie had clearly failed. But eepee experts - even one like Ferdie - are in very high demand. So when he panicked and ran, he ran into the waiting arms of the underworld...
A planet's destiny trembled in the balance.Waiting, quiet and as dangerous as a timber-wolf, Vickery heard another faint slither of foot on stone. A dark shape flitted past the lighted shop front on the opposite side of the street and vanished into the doorway. Vickery's heard gave one gigantic lunge, and a wolfish smile creased his face. He fired at the shadows and the brilliance of the exploding charge threw everything out in the street into garish highlights...
An all-powerful computer takes control of a great metropolis as a man and a woman are drawn into a love affair that may save - or destroy - their world.
Heard of you?" The princess spoke with a great weariness. "We hear about all the adventurers of the galaxy. So far all have failed. You will fail too. I know it - but I must go on trying to find the prince. When you are dead and scattered into the atoms we shall find another strong man and try again. One day, perhaps, we shall succeed. Maybe you will, but I doubt it. You too will be destroyed like all the others." With these words of confidence ringing in his ears, Big Bill Jarrett was sent out on an impossible journey - one he knew could kill him if he went, and would kill him if he didn't.
The planet Kerim must have been Utopia - once. All its inhabitants had to do when they wanted something was to pray out loud for it - and what they wanted would materialise before their eyes. But by the time Jack Waley crashed on it, its best days had long been gone - and its future was strictly limited. Which was typical Jack Waley luck. He had bungled and blundered his way across the space lanes, messing up everything he tried and being castaway on Kerim looked like the end of the line. For Kerim's people were now bands of confused savages and its cities crumbling ruins. And this time Waley knew that he'd have to change a whole world's luck if he wanted to save his own neck one more time.
The Prophets of Earth slept crated in their thousands. They filled the ship's bomb-bays, lying quietly waiting in their machine-gleaming metal sheaths. Each one was destined to cover a world. Each individual one lay there, quiescent in its capsule, awaiting the master command that would send it, after the one before and preceding the next in line in strict mathematical order, out over a new and unknown world to plunge down to its destined consummation.
Seven thousand years ago one of Earth's earliest civilisations was confronted by a menace from the stars - and died in a world-shaking effort to destroy that cosmic monster. But the death of that forgotten empire was not in vain, for they did succeed in entombing that dimension-shaking thing out of sight and harm to humanity. But even their efforts could not make that burial permanent - and after seven millennia the monster stirred again, cracking through the new world of today.
Among the myriad colourful characters of the galaxy, men called him a Treasure Troubleshooter. His name was Felix Vereker, and he liked good food and fine wines and his taste ran to Moliere and ancient legends and digging up the fabulous treasures of the past - on whatever planet they happened to be buried. He did not relish the distraction of political assassination, or mysterious attempts on his own life, or the prehistoric savagery and barbarian swords of a playground world of bored millionaires. But when his professional competence as a troubleshooter for a firm of galactic antique dealers demanded, he could be rougher and tougher than all the perils pitted against him. And he knew how to handle Delia Camacho, the lady assassin, and Miss Rosalind Henley - who demanded and then rejected more than he wanted to give. This novel of future speculation and intrigue ranges a wide galactic canvas and a profusion of brilliant colourful incidents pours out in headlong action as Felix Vereker seeks control of his own identity.
Jeremy Dodge knew the Earth would face starvation if it were not for the new science of "aquaculture". With the world's population numbering many billions, only the extra food being cultivated on the bottom of the sea could feed everyone. But, like the rest of the surface-dwellers, Jeremy did not know what a vicious monopoly underwater cultivation had become. That is, until the dreadful moment when he himself was kidnapped and dragged beneath the depths. And there he was to learn that just making his own escape would not be enough - he would have to save mankind from the tyranny of a new race of water-breathing human monsters!
A massive migration of the gods threatens the March of Gamelon with apocalyptic change. Only Torr Vorkun of Darkholm and his lovely twin sister, Tara, can preserve order and prepare the people for a new era. Torr is a magnificently powerful youth who bears the magical broadsword, Lycheaper. Tara, too, is magnificent, yet her secret power lies in the witchery she can invoke - when naked. Kenneth Bulmer, a leading British writer of fantasy and science fiction, paints a vivid and heroic picture of a world convulsed with change and aflame with new hope.
Rodro's men were pushing past, were blundering with reeking weapons into the room to kill and take the princess away. Lai half stretched up from the princess's restraining arms. The room was empty of other life apart from Sir Fezius and the two knights now lifting their swords, ready to cut down Lai. A popping noise sounded like a drum bursting. A man appeared in the middle of the room. One moment he was not there; the next he stood there, holding a bulky stick in his arm, peering about with a white face. He said something that sounded like "Skeet." The next instant the room resounded with an avalanche roar and a hellfire blast of scorching flame.
CONSPIRACY OF GENIUS His height barely reached five feet, his spindly legs supported a bulging chest, and his eyes protruded grotesquely from a gnome-like head - but within that absurd-looking man lay the mind of a genius. It was a genius that had carried mankind deep into the secrets of creation and was now on the verge of producing living organisms from test tubes filled with inert chemicals. The world, however, ridiculed the theories of Professor Cheslin Randolph and the government refused to advance the millions needed for the final series of experiments. But Professor Randolph was determined to get the money - even if it meant turning his powerful brain to robbing a spaceship in mid-flight, using trained viruses as his accomplices.
INTO THIN AIR "A porteur? Never heard of it." Robert Prestin was just an ordinary aviation journalist who had never heard of such things as porteurs, nor of other dimensions that supplied jewels to the Earth, nor of the metamorphic Borgia-like countess who ran the show with the aid of her scarlet-scaled Thrugs. And certainly he had never heard of a Lombok vine that could grow faster than a man could run. No, Robert Prestin was just an ordinary man who sometimes lost things. That is until he sat next to a beautiful girl on a plane headed for Rome - and lost her somewhere in mid-air! At that point he knew he had a lot to learn, because somehow he had - or was - the key to Irunium.
WANTED: ONE ENGINEER FOR MANAGERIAL POSITION IN IRUNIUM. WAGES HIGH. DEATH BENEFITS SUDDEN. "I am the Contessa Perdita di Montevarchi. Here in Irunium the only law is my will. "I shall seek out another engineer. But this time he will be a real engineer from a dimension that understands these things, from Slikitter, probably from Earth. He will be treated with respect because his function is valuable to me. Almost inevitably he will terminate as this offal terminated, but that is to be expected of imperfect tools. "He will not at first see the slaves in the mines and I do not with him treated as a slave. My mines must continue to produce gems for my trace across the Dimensions. An engineer is needed so I shall find one....
The chariots came on at great speed and there was no mistaking their purpose. Tulley wondered if they were using this place as a base . . . Then an arrow plunked into the parapet of his chariot. Oolou lashed the reins. The nageres sprang forward. With suicidal speed the two chariot groups closed on each other. Tulley swallowed down, feeling the dryness in his throat, loosed a shaft at the oncoming mass. There must be twenty chariots out there . . . He glanced at Oolou, shouting. She stared back at him with a ghastly grin, the blood pouring from her neck above the corselet where an arrow stood, stark and brutal. The Chariots of Ra is a parallel worlds adventure novel, set in Kenneth Bulmer's 'Keys to the Dimensions' series.
Scobie Redfern was just a nice good-looking American young man who had never heard of such things as Portals, parallel worlds, and Trugs. So when someone materialized in his apartment with the Trugs in hot pursuit, it all seemed sort of a funny game. But there was nothing amusing about it once the monsters themselves arrived. For it wasn't long before Scobie was himself running for his life from world to world and from Portal to Portal just to keep one jump ahead of the Trugs, and hoping that the Wizards of Senchuria might, just might, be able to get him back home alive and whole!
Expressway to an Uncharted Sphere "Theyre about!" the woman whispered, and Crane abruptly saw a strange light shining through the heavy black curtains that shrouded the house. He crossed to the window and before anyone could stop him he drew the curtain back. At first he did not understand what he saw: a round gleaming, colour-running orb stared unwinkingly back into his face. It was an eye. An immense sad eye staring at him through the chink of the curtains, an eye surrounded by a living whorl of flame that he had last seen engulfing poor Barney in the parking lot. At least three others had disappeared into the strange world from which those aliens had come, and a girl had been driven insane by them. And before Crane's quest to unravel the secret of the Map Country was complete, the fate of two worlds would hang in the balance.
Cy Yancey dreamt of being a big game hunter adventuring in Africa. Little did he know that stepping into an alleyway outside his rifle club would lead him to the most important hunt in his life, a hunt that would take Cy much farther than Africa, a hunt through the worlds of the Dimensions, seeking, of all things, Earth! For Yancey, in trying to grab a cab, ends up hitching a ride with Porteurs Zelda and Jorine - escapees from the power of the mysterious Contessa. Fleeing with them, Yancey is bounced from one Dimension to another until he arrives on Jundagai, planet of the Hunters. On Jundagai lies the answer to Yancey's dreams. The Hunt reigns supreme, though often one is not sure what the quarry is. But Jundagai holds still a greater attraction. Jundagai, Yancey's prison, holds the key to home. Yancey has only to find the right lock before death finds him.
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