Frank Belknap Long 02 Science Fiction MEGAPACK: 22 Classic Stories, page 1
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
MEET THE AUTHOR
BRIDGEHEAD
THE BODY-MASTERS
BLUE EARTHMAN
RED STORM ON JUPITER
TEMPORARY WARP
THE BLACK VORTEX
MIND OUT OF TIME
WHITE BARRIER
FLAME OF LIFE
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW
WOMAN OUT OF TIME
THE HORIZONTALS
THE VIBRATION WASPS
BROWN
PRISONERS IN FLATLAND
TO FOLLOW KNOWLEDGE
CIRCLE OF YOUTH
STAR COMRADES
SON OF HIS FATHER
WILLIE
ALIAS THE LIVING
HE CAME AT DUSK
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Second Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC.
The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
“Bridgehead” was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1944.
“The Body-Masters” (also published as “The Love-Slave and the Scintists”) was originally published in Weird Tales, February 1935.
“Blue Earthman” was originally published in Astounding Stories, April 1935.
“Red Storm on Jupiter” was originally published in Astounding Stories, May 1936.
“Temporary Warp” was originally published in Astounding Stories, August 1937.
“The Black Vortex” was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1937.
“Mind Out of Time” was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1938.
“White Barrier” was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1939.
“Flame of Life” was originally published in Science Fiction, Octber 1939.
“Escape from Tomorrow” was originally published in Weird Tales, December 1939.
“Woman Out of Time” was originally published in Astonishing Stories, August 1940.
“The Horizontals” was originally published in Super Science Stories, November 1940.
“The Vibration Wasps” was originally published in Comet, January 1941.
“Brown” was originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1941.
“Prisoners in Flatland” was originally published in Startling Stories, September 1941.
“To Follow Knowledge” was originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1942.
“Circle of Youth” was originally published in Super Science Stories, February 1943.
“Star Comrades” was originally published in Science Fiction Stories, April 1943.
“Son of His Father” was originally published in Startling Stories, June 1943.
“Willie” was originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1943.
“Alias the Living” was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1944.
“He Came at Dusk” was originally published in Weird Tales, January 1944.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Published with the kind permission and assistance of Lily Doty, Mansfield M. Doty, and the family of Frank Belknap Long.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Frank Belknap (1901-1994)—one of the early masters of fantasy and science fiction, friend of and collaborator with H.P. Lovecraft—produced hundreds of novels, short stories, and poems throughout his long and distinguished career. From fantasy and horror in Weird Tales to action-adventure science fiction in Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories to more “nuts and bolts” science fiction in Astounding Stories, and also work in the romance and mystery fields, his career spanned 7 decades and was filled with remarkable accomplishments. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention, the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987 from the Horror Writers of America, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1977.
This, the second volume his science fiction, will be followed shortly by a third—as well as two volumes of his weird fantasy and horror.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Originally published in 1945.
Born in New York City a little after the turn of the century. Educated New York public schools and New York University, School of Journalism. Have contributed about 400 mystery, adventure, detective and science fiction stories to 50 magazines in United States and Canada. Work has been included in John Day, Macy-Masius and Blue Ribbon Classics anthologies, (Creeps by Night, edited by Dashiell Hammett, Modern Tales of the Supernatural, Not at Night, More Not at Night, etc.) Also critical articles on supernatural horror in literature, book reviews, and a preface to Century Company biography of Ambrose Bierce.
Boyhood ambition—to be a far-roaming naturalist in the Louis Agassiz tradition. Held to this ambition tenaciously from the tender age of eleven until I sold my first story at the age of seventeen. Then embraced a career of free-lance magazine writing which I have not yet abandoned, though like a good many writers of my acquaintance I have occasional sterile periods extending over several weeks which make savage inroads on my income.
Extra-curricular activities in recent months have included trying my hand at comic book writing (sometimes you can pound ’em right off) occupying one of seventeen editorial desks (behind a haze of tobacco smoke) on a popular science slick, and script reading for a major film company. Two of these activities still take up some of the slack.
Of mixed New England and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. A good many of my forebears have been rather colorful rebels, subtly or aggressively at odds with their environment. A direct maternal ancestor, yclept Edward Doty, had the distinction of being the only indentured and non-puritanic lad on the Mayflower. He was the first man to fight a duel on the American continent, was roundly censured, and rumor has it he had forty-eight children.
Collateral lines include two Civil War generals who were decidedly characters. Paternal grandfather, a building contractor, erected the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1883, and I still have the flag which was draped around Miss Liberty’s arm at the time of the unveiling, and a dim recollection of being carried up into the torch to look out over New York harbor at the age of three.
I have still retained my boyhood absorption in all branches of natural science, and other interests include what the late H. P. Lovecraft called “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” detective murder mysteries, realistic contemporary novels, clinical case histories in the psycho-analytic field, travel (books about it, and the real thing when circumstances do not stand in the way) antiquarian research, museums of art and natural history, good plays, nut-brown ale, checkers and long walks in the country.
Favorite authors: Poe, Bierce, Blackwood, Dunsany, Machen, Emily Bronte, Joseph Shearing, Turgeniev, Thomas Mann, and Jack London. Favorite poets: Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Swinburne, Heine, Robinson Jeffers, Carl Sandburg.
Fellow-writers with whom I have either collaborated, or enjoyed long shop-talk discussions include (or did include, for a few have passed beyond the veil) H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Howard, Otis Kline, Manly Wellman, Oscar J. Friend, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Malcolm Jameson, C. L. Moore, Otto Binder, August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Howard Wandrei, and Hank Kuttner.
I am of medium height, with dark hair and eyes, like to wear old clothes when I write, or saunter forth for a brief stroll in the gathering suburban dusk. Am a bit shy, and shun personal contacts until I know a person quite well, when I have a tendency to expand.
Psychologically I am in the main what Adler would call a “sensationalist introver
BRIDGEHEAD
Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1944.
The blond Eurasian giant swung in between the big doors, and crossed the room in three long strides. Thick folds of scorched flesh lidded his pupils and his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, giving him the aspect of a lean and angry bulldog straining at the leash.
“Sit down, Ivor,” a steely voice said. “Over there, where your face won’t be in shadows.”
Straddling a chair, the giant gripped the seat with both hands, and eased his enormous bulk down upon it. He sat facing the Interrogator, grimacing with pain, fumbling for words that would ease the agony and the shame of his failure.
Invisible lighting flooded the big, blank-walled room, and glimmered on the circular top of the examining unit, which stood against one wall, and encircled an Interrogator whose face was a glacial mask behind the glimmer.
“Well, Ivor?” the Interrogator prodded.
“My instructions were to familiarize myself with the First Glass Age Sector, particularly the ‘nerve-artery’ metropolises on the northeastern seaboard and the population overflow areas surrounding them,” the giant said quickly, as though repeating a formula learned by rote.
The Interrogator frowned. “Your specific instructions were much more concrete, weren’t they?”
The giant nodded uneasily. Surprisingly he did not feel afraid, though he knew he ought to feel terrified.
“My specific instructions were to blast out a strategic temporal bridgehead in one of those areas. What I actually did was pin-chart the entire seaboard to eliminate the bulge areas.”
“Well, suppose you tell me exactly what happened in your own words. I should prefer not to interrupt you.”
“The largest Glass Age metropolis is New York in New York. But there’s a bulge there—a bad one. I decided to blast out the bridgehead in the overflow area surrounding a smaller, coastal bay metropolis a little to the north of New York. Boston in Masschutt…Massachusetts.”
“Well, well?”
“I blasted out a perfect stasis, clear and sharp from our side, but—”
“But…pah. It is a synonym for failure.”
The big Eurasian paled, then decided to ignore the interruption. “The time seepage absorber must have dilated a little too rapidly. I was standing about forty feet from the edge of the cliff when I blasted. The concussion lifted me up, and hurled me violently forward into the stasis.”
The giant paused, as though he were seeking to convince the Interrogator of his sincerity as much by his manner as his words. The pause was soothing to his bruised ego. It enabled him to dramatize himself as a man who could time his feats of endurance to correspond with the expectations aroused by his words. It also enabled him to relive the entire incident with little more credit to himself.
The Interrogator’s brittle fingers made a drumming sound on the flat top of the examining unit.
“Go on.”
“I allowed for erosion, the blotting out of a half million years of geologic weathering. But I forgot that a slight seismic disturbance could more than offset a complete reversal of the weathering process.”
The giant shuddered. “There can be quite a lot of seismic disturbances in a half million years. Instead of advancing, the entire face of the cliff had moved back. There was a new wall, but it was thirty feet behind me. I…I dropped forty feet and landed on an outcropping about fifty feet in width, and possibly seventy feet from the bottom of the ravine. The blaster struck the shelf, rebounded, and went clattering on down.”
“And you returned without recovering it?”
The Interrogator’s voice was no longer steely. It now possessed a tensile edge that would have bit through steel like a knife through putty.
The giant gnawed at his underlip, and met the Interrogator’s accusing stare with mingled pride and humiliation. The pride of a wounded tiger that has fought many formidable battles before receiving scars of which it is ashamed; the humiliation which a grievous error of judgment leaves in the mind when stark urgency makes the retracing of a wrong trail a thing not to be contemplated.
“I weighed the risks, and decided against it,” he said. “The cliff wall was almost vertical. I might have gone down. I could not have climbed back. The stasis oval was directly above me, thirty feet from the edge of the cliff. I was badly burned—in need of surgical attention.”
“That worried you, did it?”
The giant’s color rose. “Suppose I’d gone down for the blaster, been captured, and sickened and died a half million years in the past. Where would THE PLAN be then?”
“Go right ahead. Tell me how you safeguarded THE PLAN by not recovering the blaster. Your instructions were to conceal the stasis oval from prying eyes on the other side. You were supposed to go through, and spray it over with a magneto-optical thin film with the same refractive index as the air around it.”
“I couldn’t—”
“You don’t have to tell me. I happen to know you can’t spray out a stasis when it isn’t grounded. The vibrations would…pah! Only saving grace is the glimmering won’t be visible from the ravine.”
“It won’t be!” the giant echoed the words as though they were pearls beyond price. “You’ve got to stand on a level with a stasis to see it.”
“It will be visible from the cliff top,” the Interrogator hammered, shattering each pearl with merciless precision. “But don’t get the idea I’m worried about just that one oval. If they find that blaster, they’ll know they’ve had a visitor.”
The Eurasian’s lips were white. “How could they know? They did not believe time travel to be possible. Their weapons were all incendiary, not atomic. In a crude way they altered electronic orbits and laid the groundwork for much that we have come to regard as end products. But—”
“Like the relativity of time,” the Interrogator suggested chillingly.
“They were familiar with the concept, of course. They could imagine what it would be like to leave their own age, and travel into the past. But they no more thought they could do so than that they could travel to…to Betelgeuse.”
“You think so?”
“I do, yes. The concept of time blasting, of time undermined and made cavernous, would be utterly beyond the comprehension of Glass Age primitives. Quite apart from the contrasting primitiveness of mining and quarrying with crude detonating instruments in three dimension, the sheer audacity of THE PLAN would—”
“Pah—a mouthful of rhetoric. Now you’ve spit it out, suppose we strip the binding energies from a few facts. We’ve blasted out temporal bridgeheads at strategic temporal Intervals clear back to the Old Stone Age. The past is honeycombed now, and it’s going to become more so. Suppose they find that blaster, blow out a stasis of their own, and start searching for our riddlings.
“Suppose they find one of our riddlings without searching, like the one you left glimmering in plain view when you allowed for erosion, but not for brain shrinkage. If they find the blaster, they’ll be all eyes and ears. Suppose they close in on one of our Sector scouts right after he’s blown a stasis, and before he can spray it out?”
The Interrogator had shut his eyes, and seemed almost to be speaking to himself. “The success of the entire PLAN will depend on how quickly we can move back and forth through time. If we attempted to conquer each age separately, if we attempted an age-hopping campaign, the divergence in weapon power alone between the more primitive societies and the atomic power civilizations close to our own age might easily result in a decimation of our forces.
“The struggle in many temporal sectors may go against us at first, but, if we can retreat through the stasis ovals when we’re hard-pressed, we’ll be in a position to regroup our forces. We’ll stage a fluid attack on all of the past, a stupendous temporal blitz which will pit age against age until we’re victorious.
“Our enemies will have to fight in one age, with a limited array of weapons. We can utilize not only our own weapons, but the weapons of every age, the peculiar military genius of every age in which those weapons originated. Since the location of the sprayed-over stasis ovals will be known to us alone we’ll command all the arteries into the past, all the temporal bridgeheads.”
