The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 1
The COMPLEAT
Collected Science-Fiction
& Fantasy Works
of
Eric Frank Russell
About this collection
and similar COMPLEAT collections
This volume includes all 112 (from 112 up to 123 depending on how one wants to count revisions and expansions) Science Fiction and Fantasy stories written and published by Eric Frank Russell during his career. The primary source of the bibliography is the information provided from www.isfdb.org.
With one bonus crime short story "Poor Dead Fool".
All stories are proofed where possible to the original published version, most commonly scans from the pulp magazines. Later major revisions are also included.
-
Six of the stories in this collection could not be sourced back to the original, so later reprints were used to complete the collection:
Invisible - Fantastic Story Quarterly – Winter 1951
(original as "Shadow Man" in Fantasy #1 – 1938)
Vampire from the Void - Fantastic Stories – October 1972
(original in Fantasy #2 – 1939)
Me and My Shadow - Dark Tides – Panther – 1963
(original in Strange Stories – February 1940)
Venturer of the Martian Mimics - Weird Tales – March 1947
(original as "I, Spy!" in Tales of Wonder #12 - 1940)
Second Genesis - New Writings in S-F 9 – 1966
(original in Blue Book – January 1952)
The Timeless Ones - Far Stars – 1961
(original in Science Fiction Quarterly – November 1952)
Styles have been changed from the originals to provide a common style throughout the collection. Spellings where deviant from modern American usage have been left in their original for "flavour", altho British standard quotes have been replaced with American standard quotes.
Obvious mistakes (duplicated words, variant spellings of the same name or phrase within a story, missing quotes, etc ...) have been corrected where found (I don't see any need to perpetuate the mistakes of the typesetters). The varying quality of the writing is not my fault!
Revisions and Expansions
Sinister Barrier – 1939 Unknown
Sinister Barrier – 1943 Fantasy Press
Dreadful Sanctuary – 1948 Astounding
Dreadful Sanctuary – 1951 Lancer
The Star Watchers – 1951 Startling Stories
Sentinels From Space – 1953 Ace
... And Then There Were None – 1951 Astounding
The Great Explosion – 1962 Pyramid
Design for Great-Day – 1953 Planet Stories
The Ultimate Invader – 1954 Ace
Call Him Dead – 1955 Astounding
Three to Conquer – 1956 Ace
Heart's Desire – 1955 Science Fantasy
A Divvil with the Women – 1960 Fantasy & Science Fiction
Plus X – 1956 Astounding
The Space Willies – 1958 Ace
Next of Kin – 1959 Dodson
Wasp – 1957 Permabook
Wasp – 1958 New Worlds
With a Strange Device - 1964 U.K. Mandarin
The Mindwarpers – 1965 U.S. Lancer
Series
Men, Martians and Machines
Jay Score – 1941
Mechanistria – 1942
Symbiotica – 1943
Mesmerica – 1955
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Individual Stories
Publication Date Title
1937/02 The Saga of Pelican West
1937/04 The Great Radio Peril
1937/06 The Prr-r-eet
1937/07 Seeker of To-morrow
1937/12 M ana
1938/01 Poor Dead Fool – non-SFF
1938/06 The World's Eighth Wonder
1938/07 Invisible (aka Shadow Man)
1938/09 Impulse
1939/03 Sinister Barrier
1939/06 Vampire from the Void
1939/12 Mightier Yet
1940/02 Me and My Shadow
1940/10 Venturer of the Martian Mimics (aka I, Spy)
1941/01 The Mechanical Mice # with Maurice G. Hugi
1941/05 Jay Score
1941/11 Seat of Oblivion
1941/12 Homo Saps # as by Webster Craig
1941/12 With A Blunt Instrument
1942/01 Mechanistria
1942/02 Mr. Wisel's Secret
1942/03 Describe a Circle
1942/08 The Kid From Kalamazoo
1943/01 Sinister Barrier
1943/10 Symbiotica
1944/03 Controller
1945/07 Resonance
1946/12 Metamorphosite
1947/02 The Timid Tiger
1947/04 The Cosmic Relic
1947/09 Hobbyist
1948/06 Dreadful Sanctuary
1948/09 Displaced Person
1948/10 Muten # as by Duncan H. Munro
1948/11 The Ponderer
1948/12 Late Night Final
1949/01 The Big Shot
1949/02 A Present from Joe
1949/03 The Glass Eye
1949/04 The Undecided
1950/04 U-Turn # as by Duncan H. Munro
1950/05 Dear Devil
1950/07 Exposure
1950/07 The Rhythm of the Rats
1950/10 First Person Singular
1950/11 Follower
1950/12 MacHinery
1951/00 Dreadful Sanctuary
1951/03 Test Piece
1951/04 Afternoon of a Fahn (aka Rainbow's End)
1951/06 ... And Then There Were None
1951/09 The Witness
1951/11 The Illusionaries
1951/11 The Star Watchers
1951/11 Ultima Thule
1952/01 Second Genesis
1952/03 I'm a Stranger Here Myself
1952/05 Fast Falls the Eventide
1952/05 Take a Seat
1952/07 Hell's Bell # as by Ducan H. Munro
1952/07 I Am Nothing
1952/09 The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch
1952/10 A Little Oil
1952/11 Last Blast
1952/11 The Timeless Ones
1953/00 Sentinels From Space
1953/01 Design for Great-Day
1953/01 Somewhere a Voice
1953/06 It's In the Blood
1953/06 This One's On Me
1953/08 A Great Deal of Power
1953/10 Postscript
1953/12 Bitter End
1953/12 Sustained Pressure
1954/00 The Ultimate Invader
1954/03 Appointment at Noon
1954/03 The Door
1954/04 Anything to Declare? # as by Nialle Wilde
1954/04 Fly Away Peter
1954/05 Weak Spot
1954/12 I Hear You Calling
1954/12 The Courtship of 53 Shotl 9G # as by Niall Wilde
1955/00 Mesmerica
1955/01 Nothing New
1955/03 D iabologic
1955/05 Allamagoosa
1955/07 Proof
1955/07 Saraband in C Sharp Major
1955/07 The Waitabits
1955/07 Tieline # as by Duncan H. Munro
1955/08 Call Him Dead
1955/11 Down Rover Down
1955/11 Heart's Desire # as by Nigel Wilde
1956/00 Three to Conquer
1956/03 Minor Ingredient
1956/04 Legwork
1956/04 Sole Solution
1956/06 Plus X
1956/07 Storm Warning
1956/08 Heav'n Heav'n
1956/08 Top Secret
1956/09 Quiz Game
1956/11 Fall Guy
1957/01 Nuisance Value
1957/08 Love Story
1957/09 Into Your Tent I'll Creep
1957/11 Early Bird
1957/11 Wasp
1958/00 The Space Willies
1958/02 Brute Farce
1958/03 Wasp
1958/04 Basic Right
1958/06 There's Always Tomorrow
1959/01 Study in Still Life
1959/04 Now Inhale
1959/05 The Army Comes To Venus
1959/11 Next of Kin
1959/11 Panic Button
1960/01 A Divvil with the Women # as by Niall Wilde
1962/00 The Great Explosion
1964/00 With a Strange Device
1965/00 The Mindwarpers
1965/03 Meeting on Kangshan
1973/09 Eternal Rediffusion # with Leslie J. Johnson
The COMPLEAT
Collected Science-Fiction
& Fantasy Works
of
Eric Frank Russell
The Saga of Pelican West
Astounding – February 1937
Chapter One
IT'S HELL to be old and marooned, worse to be marooned in solitude. Of course, there had been George Andrews, Bill Dorian, Fergie McOchtra and Captain Beck. He'd buried them all three weeks back, their faces rotted beneath a yard of Ceres' loam.
Bert Pellinore West, erstwhile second navigator of the space freighter Lady Betty, sprawled across a rock and studied his reflection in a pool of water. The shining liquid mirrored a pair of gray eyes set in a muscular, leathery countenance surmounted by a mop of bristly white hair. Not so good. Three-score years and ten were O.K. on Earth, but forty-five years was the span of the spaceways. And he was thirty-nine.
A pebble plopped, dissolved his features with a dozen ripples. He rolled onto his back, surveyed the spangled cosmic curtain, and pondered.
They had been thirty days out from Great Plains City, the premier Martian space port, when Michaelson developed blue death. Terrestrial medicos claimed this affliction was bubonic plague complicated by alien metabolism. Anyway, Michaelson had got blue swellings in the armpits. There was no known cure. They'd given him an overdose of dope and incinerated him in the four-o'clock stern combustion chamber.
Next day young Jensen had the fateful lumps and might have concealed them but for the sharp eyes of McOchtra. Jensen swigged a special cup of coffee and passed out. They'd shoved his still-warm form into the six-o'clock stern chamber, and Beck had cursed like a pirate when the rocket expelled a partly charred body and threw the ship two degrees off line of flight.
Solikon, Roberts and Quayle had displayed the fateful symptoms within forty-eight hours. Solikon and Roberts had innocently quaffed what they were given, breathed their last and sped along the Lady Betty's fiery wake. Ever suspicious, Quayle had refused to eat or drink. In the end they'd held him down while his lungs absorbed a liter of mercy gas. Then his sparks had pursued the others' into the maw of night.
Fifty thousand miles Sunward off Ceres five more had paid the penalty for touching Quayle. The Lady Betty had landed on the surface of the little sphere; the fated five had been forced outside at the point of the ray gun. Lecko, senior member of the survivors, had tossed out a supply of food, iodine, quinine, one ray gun, two compressed air-guns and a box of poisoned darts. With a flash and a roar, the half-staffed Lady Betty had plunged into the sky and made for the Jovian system.
Yes, he'd buried the others three weeks ago. Strange that he, Bert Pellinore West, better known as "Pelican", had survived. So far as he knew he was the only man to produce buboes and recover. It must be the berries.
He sat up, plunged a hand into a pocket, brought forth a score of plump, red berries plucked from an adjacent bush. They were tart, but refreshing, and packed his stomach comfortably. White teeth bit into the crumbly substance of a crimson fruit as he continued to consider the problem of his own survival.
Queer how he'd hung on, just him. And Alfred, the ship's mascot. Darn it, where was the animated sausage? He got to his feet and stood up on the rock, chest heaving in the thin air.
"Al-fred!" he bawled through cupped hands.
"Honk!" came the response from dark recesses of a near-by gully.
"Come here."
"Come here," mimicked the voice raspily.
"You come here, you overgrown fish bait!"
"Fish bait," echoed the unseen speaker.
"Damn!" Pelican West sat down with obvious exasperation.
"Damn!" repeated the voice dutifully.
Something moved in the shadows of the gully's depths, a small stream of pebbles cascaded down one side, the concealed speaker produced a veritable torrent of oaths.
"Hurry up," shouted Pelican impatiently.
Over the edge appeared a pair of brilliant optics set in a flat, horny head. The head moved forward followed by ten feet of sinuous body thicker than a man's arm. Weak rays from the distant Sun revealed a magnificent specimen of a Callistrian domestic ulahulah, or reticulated python.
Rapidly, the serpent glided toward the man. There was something jaunty about its carriage, which, coupled with its large head and liquid, intelligent eyes, deprived it of the repulsiveness of its Terrestrial prototypes.
"We've got to get a move on, Alfred," said Pelican West. "We've a thousand miles to tramp to get around this one-cent world, and if we don't stumble across anything civilized we're gone coons."
He gained his feet, made certain his heat-ray gun rested securely in its holster, hefted his water bottle and haversack, slung an air gun over one shoulder.
"Left, right, left—quick march!"
"Honk!" said Alfred.
IT WAS the thirty-ninth day, Earth time, since the Lady Betty's departure. Pelican sat straddle-legged on the apex of a sixty-foot tor, the highest piece of ground he had encountered, and surveyed the scene before him.
Away to the brief, deeply curved horizon stretched a monotonous landscape of dust, rocks and loam, molded into low hummocks and shallow gullies, dotted here and there with tiny shrubs and berry-bearing bushes.
A heavy thump reached his ears, he turned his head, caught a momentary glimpse of something falling, and heard a second thump. He jumped to his feet, stared without avail, commenced running in the direction from which the mysterious sounds had come.
Assisted by weak gravity, handicapped by thin atmosphere, he bounded along in giant strides, his chest straining mightily. A gun whined in a distant ravine; Pelican saw its thin, pale-golden beam angle to the sky. Two figures—a woman and a uniformed man—sprang from the depression, raced across his line of progress a quarter of a mile ahead. Four more figures sprouted from the same spot and rushed after the fugitives.
"Pirates!" cried Pelican, flinging himself headlong into a hollow. He rolled in the dust, gained hands and knees, crept up the slope cautiously. With his ray gun in his right fist, he raised his head slowly above the rim.
The leading man of the quartet, a burly individual with a week's growth upon his face, had ceased to run and was standing with legs braced apart, his weapon extended in a hairy paw, his eyes drawing a line to the escaping couple. A golden heat beam lanced from the gun's muzzle, crossed intervening space in a split second and struck the man in uniform. The poor devil collapsed without a sound, thin spirals of smoke ascending from the back of his skull. The woman shrieked.
Callously, the marksman aimed again. Pelican got the fellow's image dead center in the frame of his Albada sight, squeezed shut the divided handle of his gun. The range was four hundred yards, but he made the bell ring first time, caught his mark in the middle. The pirate hooted like a factory siren, dropped, writhed onto his back and lay with legs kicking frenziedly and his arms flailing.
Two of the remaining trio turned and raced for the gully whence they had come. The third hesitated, bent over his screaming companion, unconsciously lowering his own head into the center of Pelican's Albada. For one second he stood a man, the next he sat a lifeless trunk, with a smoldering cinder on its shoulders.
Running crazily, the woman had described a half circle, bringing her fifty yards to Pelican's right. He called to her and she approached, sobbing hysterically. A roar of rockets came from the concealed gully.
"Down!" shouted Pelican. "Down!" Without more ado he pushed her to the ground and smothered her from feet to head with dust and pebbles. "For heaven's sake, don't move. Whatever happens, don't move."
He glanced around hastily, saw a boulder with a projecting upper edge, ran to it and wriggled into the narrow gap between rock and earth. The space available was scarcely adequate, but he crammed himself in as far as possible, did his utmost to simulate a rock, and hoped for the best.
RARIFIED air shuddered under a barrage of sound waves, as the hidden rockets doubled their output. Something exploded into the sky and carried its hubbub in a sweeping circle around the field of action. The uproar moved to and fro as its source shifted rapidly from point to point, and when it came overhead Pelican opened a wary eye and saw a space liner's lifeboat burning the air at an altitude of five hundred feet. Scowling faces at the keel window were examining the terrain beneath.
Dust bubbled and stank, small pebbles burst with whippish cracks when the flying searchers cast a tentative ray along the tiny valley.
"Keep still," growled Pelican to the recumbent woman. "They're looking for a movement, and if you blink an eyelid you're a corpse."
Methodically, the lifeboat cruised back and forth, covering all ground within a radius of one mile, releasing a ray whenever its outlaw crew thought they could see something to disturb. Eventually it gained height, streaked across the sky and vanished over the horizon.
"Don't move yet," warned Pelican. "You stay put until I tell you."
Ten minutes dragged past before he congratulated himself upon his own caution. With rockets silent, the lifeboat suddenly appeared like a phantom; it dropped from an immense height, turned on its power and drummed four times around the area. If its crew expected to catch their opponents napping, they were foiled. The tiny ship drove upward for the second time and departed with an air of finality.
"You can get up now." Pelican scrambled from his refuge, dusted himself and stretched his arms. His companion came to her feet and stood revealed as a brunette, about twenty-five, not beautiful, yet attractive.
