The Iron Duke, page 1
SELECTED FICTION WORKS
BY L. RON HUBBARD
FANTASY
The Case of the Friendly Corpse
Death’s Deputy
Fear
The Ghoul
The Indigestible Triton
Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep
Typewriter in the Sky
The Ultimate Adventure
SCIENCE FICTION
Battlefield Earth
The Conquest of Space
The End Is Not Yet
Final Blackout
The Kilkenny Cats
The Kingslayer
The Mission Earth Dekalogy*
Ole Doc Methuselah
To the Stars
ADVENTURE
The Hell Job series
WESTERN
Buckskin Brigades
Empty Saddles
Guns of Mark Jardine
Hot Lead Payoff
A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s
novellas and short stories is provided at the back.
*Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes
Published by Galaxy Press, LLC
7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200
Hollywood, CA 90028
© 2007 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.
Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.
Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.
Cover art: Argosy Magazine is © 1937 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-59212-651-4 Mobipocket version
ISBN 978-1-59212-319-3 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-173-1 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927527
Contents
FOREWORD
THE IRON DUKE
STORY PREVIEW:
HOSTAGE TO DEATH
GLOSSARY
L. RON HUBBARD
IN THE GOLDEN AGE
OF PULP FICTION
THE STORIES FROM THE
GOLDEN AGE
FOREWORD
Stories from Pulp Fiction’s Golden Age
AND it was a golden age.
The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.
“Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.
The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.
In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.
Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”
Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.
In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.
Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.
Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.
This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.
Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.
L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.
Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.
—Kevin J. Anderson
KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!
The Iron Duke
The Iron Duke
TWO men strode hurriedly through the black of the Aldorian night, shadows against the darker shadow of brush along the edge of the field. Beyond them, against the stars, loomed the foothills of the Balkan spur known as Bauchist Range. A sweet tang of spring drifted on the wind they clove, belied by the sharp chill of the passing winter. Far off a train whistled three ghostly notes.
“I’m f-froze!” said the shorter man. “W-Why didn’t you tell me that it was this cold in the B-Balkans?”
“Quit chattering! If a patrol hears those teeth they’ll think we’ve got a machine gun!”
“D-Don’t mention machine guns. They make me think of f-f-firing squads! Gosh, Blacky, aren’t we ever going to get across the fr-frontier?”
“Take it easy, sweetheart. When I stopped running back there, we’d crossed the frontier. We’re in Aldoria.”
“Blacky, what’ll we do for passports?”
“We’ll think about that if we meet up with a patrol.”
“Yeah. But we can’t use our own. The Nazi government would extradite us! And it’s too cold to get sh-shot.”
“Take it easy, sweetheart. Hear that?”
The shorter one paused and listened to the nearing hoot of a train and then had to speed up to catch his companion, who had turned at an angle toward a distant light and was increasing his pace.
As the light ahead grew brighter, other lights about it came into sight, until the railroad station, the only illuminated building in the sleeping hamlet, took definite form. Gravel and cinders crunched beneath their feet as they struggled up the incline to the tracks. About a mile away, the headlight of the locomotive was growing.
“We c-can’t get on that!” said the shorter man. “We haven’t any Aldorian dough! And they’ll ask for our passports, and the Nazi government—”
“Have I ever let you down?” said the taller one crisply.
“No—yeah! You said they wouldn’t find out them artillery shells was loaded with sand and that the machine guns had solid barrels until we collected the c-cash, and now look at us! Broke in a postage stamp B-Balkan state! Why didn’t you l-l-let us try for the coast, where it’s w-warm?”
“Somewhere around here,” said the other affably, “there will be a grave marked Stub Doyle, unless I hear large quantities of quiet.”
“Okay, Blacky. B-But when I think of that n-nice checkered topcoat back in—”
Blacky Lee stepped off the track and hauled Stub Doyle with him. The chunky mountain locomotive snorted and squealed and rattled to a halt beyond the station, leaving the last car abreast of the two wayfarers. Blacky Lee fumbled with the door and finally got it open. He gave Stub a boost that landed the little fellow asprawl in the vestibule, and then swung the one grip after him and swiftly followed it himself. Blacky closed the door and motioned along the aisle.
The train was already starting when they found an empty compartment and, shortly after, when the trainmaster glanced in on his way by, his attention was in no way attracted by the passengers therein, curled on the seats.
Stub Doyle, as soon as the menace was past, put his hands on the radiator with a grateful sigh. He was still occasionally convulsed with shivers, but gradually these subsided and he paid more and more attention to Blacky Lee.
Blacky was sitting up again, looking absently through the window at the flying night. He was a handsome fellow, but not in the sense of possessing regular features; his cheekbones were prominent and high, and his brows jutted in such a way as to give his light-colored eyes the impression of being masked. His mouth was pleasant, his teeth even and flawless, and his jaw strong. His ginger-colored mustache was usually neatly trimmed, but never pointed. He had the easy, careless air of the cosmopolitan, and there was something about him that suggested that he commanded any situation in which he found himself. And now, after he had scrambled through briars and creeks, his suit was still obviously from London’s Strand. He was plausible and personable, and if, at times, he cared more about making his own laws than following those made by others, his good points still outweighed his bad.
Stub always had an uneasy feeling about Blacky Lee. Stub’s state of mind was that of a man watching another holding a cannon cracker and not knowing just when he’d let that cracker explode. At least once a day Stub wondered why he had ever allowed himself to become associated with as nerve-racking a fellow as Blacky Lee. One never knew what was going on in Lee’s mind and never, never knew just when those thoughts would amalgamate with a bang. And sitting there watching Blacky just now, Stub forgot all about how grateful he was for the warmth in the radiator.
Blacky Lee had come out of his reverie and was now, by aid of his reflection in the glass, carefully twirling his ginger mustache into a pair of military points. Stub, who always ran on the assumption that now, at last, he knew everything about Blacky Lee, was sorely jolted by the little container of mustache wax which Blacky was using. Never in all the years he had been with Blacky had Stub known him to carry wax or use wax, and now, with their baggage abandoned in Austria, a thing as nonsensical as mustache wax was here in Blacky’s possession! Certainly Blacky was attempting no disguise, for pointing a mustache would be a very weak attempt in that direction.
Stub gave over wondering. He sighed and rested his little round face in his pudgy hands. “There was such a nice bottle of anisette in my trunk,” he sighed. “Do you suppose I’ll ever see that bottle again, Blacky?”
“Probably never.”
“And that nice new suit with the yellow stripes—”
“It’s probably adorning the porter of the King’s Hotel—if his taste in clothes is as bad as yours.”
“Gosh! You really think so, Blacky?”
“You’re lucky,” said Lee, “not to have that suit full of holes—with you in back of each hole.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re always telling me how lucky I am to be alive,” sighed Stub. “You pull me through hell and high dives with one of your ideas, and then when we escape on the razor edge of execution you tell me how lucky I am! I’m not complaining, you understand, but sometimes I think my nerves just won’t stand it anymore. Tonight we should have been dining with generals and getting paid real money, but here we are, on a train without tickets, in a country which we didn’t enter legally, without so much as an Aldorian dime or a forged birth certificate!”
“You haven’t forgotten how to use a pen,” said Lee.
“Yeah, but now I haven’t even got a pen. Sometimes, Blacky—”
The train came to a screaming halt, nearly throwing Stub into the middle of the floor. He clutched the sill, staring with terrified eyes at Blacky.
“That conductor saw us. The Austrians figured we’d shuttle across the frontier and snag this rattler! Hell’s bells, Blacky, what are we going to do now?”
“Sit tight and hope,” said Blacky Lee imperturbably. “It’s impossible that they could have extradited us that fast.”
“They’d send word that we were in the country without papers,” groaned Stub. “Blacky, I can hear the rats in the dungeons already!”
Blacky was giving the troops outside the window an interested examination. A patrol, booted and greatcoated, was splashing flashlights along the side of the track and boarding the train at the next car.
“We’re in for it now,” said Stub. “And me without so much as a drink!”
Stub twisted his neck so that he could look up the track at the somber figures of the patrol, and then, when he next glanced at Blacky Lee and saw that a 9 mm Webley showed its snout from beneath Blacky’s folded topcoat, his eyes got big and then narrow. Stub, without sigh or protest, put his hand into his side pocket and gripped the butt of the Colt Police Positive .38 therein. If Blacky was going to make a fight for it even against a large and well-armed patrol, then it would be a fight.
They sat very still, though there was no perceptible change in Blacky, hearing the patrol going through the cars ahead, hearing the complaints of roused passengers who, having had to stay up to pass through the frontier, now thought they were being slightly imposed upon. The search was coming closer, compartment by compartment.
Their compartment door was thrown open by the trainmaster, who consulted his record so as to address the occupants by name and save them as much embarrassment as he could. The trainmaster’s watery eyes came up with a jerk from the record and drilled Blacky Lee.
The lieutenant in charge of the patrol was all business. He had stripped off his great gauntlets and tucked them in his belt, but he had his crop in hand and was cutting nervously at his boots as he waited for the trainmaster to speak up.
“Well?” said the dark-faced lieutenant.
“Your honor,” said the trainmaster, trembling, “I have no record of the two gentlemen in there.”
“Ah!” And the lieutenant, with all the savor of a bloodhound at last treeing his quarry, thrust himself into the room, one hand resting on the butt of his gun.
