Dino News _Faxinalipterus minimus

In 2010, scientists described a small reptile called Faxinalipterus minimus, whose fossils – dating back to 225 million years ago, towards the end of the Triassic period – were found in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Faxinalipterus was assigned to the group Pterosauria, which includes the first vertebrates to develop active flight. Its fossils were composed of bones from the postcranial skeleton and a part of the jaw (an upper jaw with several teeth) that was found separately in another field expedition. While it was not certain whether all parts belonged to the same animal and species, the scientists assumed at the time that they both belonged to Faxinalipterus.

However, a new study published in the journal PeerJ has reassessed these findings and concluded that, in fact, the isolated jaw belonged to another animal from a different species named Maehari bonapartei. This discovery was possible based on comparisons with a new fossil recently found at the same site, whose maxilla exhibited the same features as the jaw initially attributed to Faxinalipterus.

“There was always a great doubt whether the two specimens attributed to Faxinalipterus represented the same species, and whether this was a flying reptile,” said study lead author Alexander Kellner, the director of the National Museum of Brazil. These doubts have also troubled Borja Holgado, a paleontologist at the Regional University of Cariri. After examining the materials, she concluded that they belonged to two different species.

 “It was clear to me that this is a primitive reptile that did not belong to pterosaurs, as it did not present any unequivocal features of this lineage,” she said. “But the present knowledge of the faunas at the end of the Triassic indicates that the disparity of animals at that time was so great that animals that might resemble pterosaurs at first glance are not actually flying reptiles. This is what happened to Faxinalipterus and Maehary.”

After further analyses, the researchers concluded that the dentition pattern was not consistent with that of pterosaurs. Using a vast anatomical database, the scientists found that Faxinalipterus was closely related to lagerpetids, a branch considered to be a sister group to Pterosauria. Together, lagerpetids and pterosaurs form a broader group called Pterosauromorpha. According to the scientists, Maehary bonapartei was one of the most primitive members of this group.

“That is, Faxinalipterus and Maehary are not pterosaurs, but are related to them. Especially Maehary is configured as a key element in the elucidation of how the anatomical characteristics evolved along the lineage of pterosauromorphs to the pterosaurs themselves, fully adapted to the flight,” explained study senior author Rodrigo Müller, a biologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria. “These species, with an estimated length of 30 cm for Faxinalipterus and 40 cm for Maehary, demonstrate the importance of continuing to collect fossils in this region,” he concluded.

Hexham Heads

During 1971 in Great Britain on a old magazine type show Called Nationwide among the serious news reports was story about  a pair of tiny stone heads here is that bizarre story which still is very popular to this day.
The two heads were dug up in the garden of Two boys whom lived in the town of Hexham, Colin and Leslie Robson.
The boys took the heads inside thier house this is when a series of strange phenomena occurred, the heads moving the room when nobody was their ,bottles mysteriously thrown across the room .
The next door family  reported of one of thier boys hair being pulled during the night and the mother seeing a half man /Goat figure leaving thier house after the hair pulling instance.
Out of curiosity the heads were given  to Dr Anne Ross an expert in Celtic artefacts, she too experienced a truelý bizarre event.
She awoke one morning to see a part man  part wolf figure walking out of her room she preceded to follow the creature downstairs and saw it leaving through the kitchen door then lost track of it.
A few days later Dr Ross daughter Bernice told her mother of seeing a similar sighting on her way home when she saw a large werewolf like figure on the stairs that jumped over the banisters into corridor then vanished.
The wolf like figure is believed to be a relation of the Hexham  Werewolf that in the winter of 1904 killed local livestock.
Later on Dr Ross reported of feeling a cold presence then her study door  bursting open without no reason.
The heads become the Hexham Heads and Dr Ross believed the incident s stopped when the Hexham Heads were removed from  her house.
Years later a man named Desmond Craigie said he made the Hexham Heads for his daughter in 1956 ,the heads were originally three but the third got damaged and thrown away.
So it goes to show how weird the 70s could be to have this report on the television unfortunately no footage remains although thier are rumours that an audio of the show thier were on exists somewhere in the either.
# Paranormal #Cryptozoology #Weird#70s#Uk
Written and researched by Mark Antony Raines 

Firing Line by George O Smith #ScFi

Firing Line

By GEORGE O. SMITH

Mark Kingman was surprised by the tapping on his windowpane. He thought that the window was unreachable from the outside—and then he realized that it was probably someone throwing bits of dirt or small stones. But who would do that when the doorway was free for any bell-ringer?

He shrugged, and went to the window to look out—and become cross-eyed as his eyes tried to cope with a single circle not more than ten inches distant. He could see the circle—and the bands on the inside spiraling into the depths of the barrel, and a cold shiver ran up his spine from there to here. Behind the heavy automatic, a dark-complected man with a hawklike face grinned mirthlessly.

Kingman stepped back and the stranger swung in and sat upon the windowsill.

"Well?" asked the lawyer.

"Is it well?" asked the stranger. "You know me?"

"No. Never saw you before in my life? Is this a burglary?"

"Nope. If it were, I'd have drilled you first so you couldn't describe me."

Kingman shuddered. The stranger looked as though he meant it.

"In case you require an introduction," said the hard-faced man, "I'm Allison Murdoch."

"Hellion?"

"None other."

"You were in jail—"

"I know. I've been there before."

"But how did you escape?"

"I'm a doctor of some repute," said Hellion, "Or was, until my darker reputation exceeded my reputation for neural surgery. It was simple. I slit my arm and deposited therein the contents of a cigarette. It swelled up like gangrene and they removed me to the hospital. I removed a few guards and lit out in the ambulance. And I am here."

"Why?" Kingman then became thoughtful. "You're not telling me this for mutual friendship, Murdoch. What's on your mind?"

"You were in the clink, too. How did you get out?"

"The court proceedings were under question for procedure. It was further ruled that—"

"I see. You bought your way out."

"I did not—"

"Kingman, you're a lawyer. A smart one, too."

"Thank you—"

"But you're capable of buying your freedom, which you did. Fundamentally, it makes no difference whether you bribe a guard to look the other way or bribe a jury to vote the other way. It's bribery in either case."

Kingman smiled in a superior way. "With the very important difference that the latter means results in absolute freedom. Bribing a guard is freedom only so long as the law may be avoided."

"So you did bribe the jury?"

"I did nothing of the sort. It was a ruling over a technicality that did me the favor."

"You created the technicality."

"Look," said Kingman sharply. "You didn't come here to steal by your own admission and your excellent logic. You never saw me before, and I do not know of you save what I've heard. Revenge for something real or fancied is obviously no reason for this visit. I was charged with several kinds of larceny, which charges fell through and I was acquitted of them—which means that I did not commit them. I, therefore, am no criminal. On the other hand, you have a record. You were in jail, convicted, and you escaped by some means that may have included the act of first-degree murder. You came here for some reason, Murdoch. But let me tell you this: I am in no way required to explain the workings of my mind. If you expect me to reveal some legal machination by which I gained my freedom, you are mistaken. As far as the solar system is concerned, everything was legal and above board."

"I get it," smiled Murdoch. "You're untouchable."

"Precisely. And rightfully so."

"You're the man I want, then."

"It isn't mutual. I have no desire to be identified with a criminal of your caliber."

"What's wrong with it?" asked Murdoch.

"It is fundamentally futile. You are not a brilliant criminal. You've been caught."

"I didn't have the proper assistance. I shall not be caught again. Look," he said suddenly, "how is your relationship with Venus Equilateral?"

Kingman gritted his teeth and made an animal noise.

"I thought so. I have a score of my own to settle. But I need your help. Do I get it?"

"I can't see how one of your caliber is capable—"

"Are you or aren't you? Your answer may decide the duration of your life."

"You needn't threaten. I'm willing to go to any lengths to get even with Channing and his crowd. But it must be good."

"I was beaten by a technical error," explained Murdoch. "The coating on my ship did it."

"How?"

"They fired at me with a super electron-gun. A betatron. It hit me and disrupted the ship's apparatus. The thing couldn't have happened if the standard space-finish hadn't been applied to the Hippocrates."

"I'm not a technical man," said Kingman. "Explain, please."

"The average ship is coated with a complex metallic oxide which among other things inhibits secondary emission. Had we been running a ship without this coating, the secondary emission would have left the Hippocrates in fair condition electronically, but the Relay Station would have received several times the electronic charge. But the coating accepted the terrific charge and prevented the normal urge of electrons to leave by secondary emission—"

"What is secondary emission?"

"When an electron hits at any velocity, it drives from one to as high as fifty electrons from the substance it hits. The quantity depends upon the velocity of the original electron, the charges on cathode and anode, the material from which the target is made, and so on. We soaked 'em in like a sponge and took it bad. But the next time, we'll coat the ship with the opposite stuff. We'll take a bit of Venus Equilateral for ourselves."

"I like the idea. But how?"

"We'll try no frontal attack. Storming a citadel like Venus Equilateral is no child's play, Kingman. As you know, they're prepared for anything either legal or technical. I have a great respect for the combined abilities of Channing and Franks. I made my first mistake by giving them three days to make up their minds. In that time, they devised, tested, and approved an electron weapon of some power. Their use of it was as dangerous to them as it was to me—or would have been if I'd been prepared with a metallic-oxide coating of the proper type."

"Just what are you proposing?" asked Kingman. "I do not understand what you're getting at."

"You are still one of the officials of Terran Electric?"

"Naturally."

"You will be surprised to know that I hold considerable stock in that company."

"How, may I ask?"

"The last time you bucked them, you did it on the market. You lost," grinned Murdoch. "Proving that you haven't a one hundred percent record either. Well, while Terran Electric was dragging its par value down around the twos and threes, I took a few shares."

"How do you stand?"

"I rather imagine that I hold fifteen or twenty percent."

"That took money."

"I have money," said Murdoch modestly. "Plenty of it. I should have grabbed more stock, but I figured that between us we have enough to do as we please. What's your holdings?"

"I once held forty-one percent. They bilked me out of some of that. I have less than thirty percent."

"So we'll run the market crazy again, and between us we'll take off control. Then, Kingman, we'll use Terran Electric to ruin Venus Equilateral."

"Terran Electric isn't too good a company now," admitted Kingman. "The public stays away in huge droves since we bucked Interplanetary Communications. That bunch of electronic screwballs has the public acclaim. They're now in solid since they opened person-to-person phone on the driver frequencies. You can talk to someone in the Palanortis Country of Venus with the same quality and speak-ability that you get in making a call from here to the house across the street."

"Terran Electric is about finished," said Murdoch flatly. "They shot their wad and lost. You'll be bankrupt in a year, and you know it."

"That includes you, doesn't it?"

"Terran Electric is not the mainstay of my holdings," smiled Murdoch. "Under assumed names, I have picked up quite a few bits. Look, Kingman, I'm advocating piracy!"

"Piracy?" asked Kingman aghast.

"Illegal piracy. But I'm intelligent. I realize that a pirate hasn't a chance against civilization unless he is as smart as they are. We need a research and construction organization, and that's where Terran Electric comes in. It's an old company, well established. It's now on the rocks. We can build it up again. We'll use it for a base, and set the research boys to figuring out the answers we need. Eventually we'll control Venus Equilateral, and half of the enterprises throughout the system."

"And your main plan?"

"You run Terran Electric, and I'll run the space piracy. Between us we'll have the system over a barrel. Space craft are still run without weapons, and no weapons are suited for space fighting. But the new field opened up by the driver radiation energy may exhibit something new in weapons. That's what I want Terran Electric to work on."

"We'll have to plan a bit more," said Kingman thoughtfully. "I'll cover you up, and eventually we'll buy you out. Meanwhile we'll go to work on the market and get control of Terran Electric. And plan, too. It'll have to be foolproof."

"It will be," said Murdoch. "We'll plan it that way."

"We'll drink on it," said Kingman.

"You'll drink on it," said Murdoch. "I never touch the stuff. I still pride myself on my skill with a scalpel, and I do not care to lose it. Frankly, I hope to keep it long enough to uncover the metatarsal bones of one Donald Channing, Director of Communications."

Kingman shuddered. At times, murder had passed through his mind when thinking of Channing. But this cruel idea of vivisecting an enemy indicated a sadism that was far beyond Kingman's idea of revenge. Of course, Kingman never considered that ruining a man financially, reducing him to absolute dependency upon friends or government, when the man had spent his life in freedom and plenty—the latter gained by his ability under freedom—was cruel and inhuman.

And yet it would take a completely dispassionate observer to tell which was worse; to ruin a man's body or to ruin a man's life.

The man in question was oblivious to these plans on his future. He was standing before a complicated maze of laboratory glassware and a haywire tangle of electronic origin. He looked it over in puzzlement, and his lack of enthusiasm bothered the other man. Wesley Farrell thought that his boss would have been volubly glad to see the fruits of his labor.



"No doubt it's wonderful," smiled Channing. "But what is it, Wes?"

"Why, I've been working on an alloy that will not sustain an arc."

"Go on. I'm interested even though I do not climb the chandelier and scream, beating my manly chest."

"Oil switches are cumbersome. Any other means of breaking contact is equally cumbersome if it is to handle much power. My alloy is non-arcing. It will not sustain an arc, even though the highest current and voltage are broken."

"Now I am really interested," admitted Channing. "Oil switches in a spaceship are a definite drawback."

"I know. So—here we are."

"What's the rest of this stuff?" asked Channing, laying a hand on the glassware.

"Be careful!" said Farrell in concern. "That's hot stuff."

"Oh?"

"In order to get some real voltages and currents to break without running the main Station bus through here, I cooked this stuff up. The plate-grilleworks in the large tubes exhibit a capacity between them of about one microfarad. Empty, that is, or I should say precisely point nine eight microfarads in vacuuo. The fluid is of my own devising, concocted for the occasion, and has a dielectric constant of thirteen times ten to the sixth power. It—"

"Great Howling Rockets!" exploded Channing. "That makes the overall capacity equal to thirteen farads!"

"Just about. Well, I have the condenser charged to three kilovolts, and then I discharge it through this switch made of the non-arcing alloy. Watch! No, Don, from back here, please, behind this safety glass."

Channing made some discomforting calculations about thirteen farads at three thousand volts charge and decided that there was something definitely unlucky about the number thirteen.

"The switch, now," continued Farrell, as though thirteen farads was just a mere drop in the bucket, "is opened four milliseconds after it is closed. The time-constant of the discharging resistance is such that the voltage is point eight three, of its peak three thousand volts, giving a good check of the alloy."

"I should think so," groused Channing. "Eighty-three percent of three thousand volts is just shy of twenty-five hundred volts. The current of discharge passing through a circuit that will drop the charge in a thirteen farad condenser eighty-three percent in four milliseconds will be something fierce, believe me."

"That is why I use the heavy busbars from the condenser bank through the switch."

"I get it. Go ahead, Wes. I want to see this non-arcing switch of yours perform."

Farrell checked the meters, and then said "Now!" and punched the switch at his side. Across the room a solenoid drove the special alloy bar between two clamps of similar metal. Almost immediately, four thousandths of a second later, to be exact, the solenoid reacted automatically and the no-arc alloy was withdrawn. A minute spark flashed briefly between the contacts.

"And that is that," said Channing, slightly dazed by the magnitude of it all, and the utter simplicity of the effects. "But look, Wes, may I ask you a favor? Please discharge that infernal machine and drain that electrolyte out. Then make the thing up in a tool-steel case and seal it. Also hang on busbars right at the plates themselves, and slap a peak-voltage fuse across the terminals. One that will close at anything above three thousand volts. Follow me?"

"I think so. But that is not the main point of interest—"

"I know," grinned Channing, mopping his forehead. "The non-arc is. But that fragile glassware makes me as jittery as a Mexican jumping bean."

"But why?"

"Wes, if that glassware fractures somewhere, and that electrolyte drools out, you'll have a condenser of one microfarad—charged to thirteen million times three thousand volts. Or, in nice, hollow, round numbers, forty billion volts! Four times ten to the tenth. Of course, it won't get that far. It'll arc across the contacts before it gets that high, but it might raise particular hell on the way out. Take it easy, Wes. We're seventy millionodd miles from the nearest large body of dirt, all collected in a little steel bottle about three miles long and a mile in diameter. I'd hate to stop all interplanetary communications while we scraped ourselves off of the various walls and treated ourselves for electric shock. It would—the discharge itself, I mean—raise hell with the equipment anyway. So play it easy, Wes. We do not permit certain experiments out here because of the slow neutrons that sort of wander through here at fair density. Likewise, we cannot permit dangerous experiments. And anything that includes a dangerous experiment must be out, too."

"Oh," said Wes. His voice and attitude were together crestfallen.

"Don't take it so hard, fella," grinned Channing. "Anytime we have to indulge in dangerous experiments, we always do it with an assistant—and in one of the blister-laboratories. But take that fragile glassware out of the picture and I'll buy it," he finished.

Walt Franks entered and asked what was going on.

"Wes was just demonstrating the latest equipment in concentrated deviltry," smiled Channing.

"That's my department," said Walt.

"Oh, it's not as bad as your stuff," said Channing. "What he's got here is an alloy that will break several million watts without an arc. Great stuff, Walt."

"Sounds swell," said Walt. "Better scribble it up and we'll get a patent. It sounds useful."

"I think it may bring us a bit of change," said Channing. "It's great stuff, Wes."

"Thanks. It annoyed me to see those terrific oil-breakers we have here. All I wanted to do was to replace 'em with something smaller and more efficient."

"You did, Wes. And that isn't all. How did you dream up that high-dielectric?"

"Applied several of the physical phenomena."

"That's a good bet, too. We can use several fluids of various dielectric constants. Can you make solids as well?"

"Not as easily. But I can try—?"

"Go ahead and note anything you find above the present, listed compounds and their values."

"I'll list everything, as I always do."

"Good. And the first thing to do is to can that stuff in a steel case."

"It'll have to be plastalloy."

"That's as strong as steel and nonconducting. Go ahead."

Channing led Franks from the laboratory, and once outside Channing gave way to a session of the shakes. "Walt," he asked plaintively, "take me by the hand and lead me to Joe's. I need some vitamins."

"Bad?"

"Did you see that glassblower's nightmare?"

"You mean that collection of cut glass?" grinned Walt. "Uh-huh. It looked as though it were about to collapse of its own dead weight."

"That held an electrolyte of dielectric constant thirteen times ten to the sixth. He had it charged to a mere three thousand volts. Ye Gods, Walt. Thirteen farads at three KV. Whew. And when he discharged it, the confounded leads that went through the glass sidewalls to the condenser plates positively glowed in the cherry red. I swear it!"

"He's like that," said Walt. "You shouldn't worry about him. He'll have built that condenser out of good stuff—the leads will be alloys like those we use in the bigger tubes. They wouldn't fracture the glass seals no matter what the temperature difference between them and the glass was. Having that alloy around the place—up in the tube-maintenance department they have a half ton of quarter-inch rod—he'd use it naturally."

"Could be, Walt. Maybe I'm a worry wart."

"You're not used to working with his kind."

"I quote: 'Requiring a high voltage source of considerable current capacity, I hit upon the scheme of making a super-high capacity condenser and discharging it through my no-arc alloy. To do this it was necessary that I invent a dielectric material of C equals thirteen times ten to the sixth.' Unquote."

"Wes is a pure scientist," reminded Walt. "If he were investigating the electrical properties of zinc, and required solar power magnitudes to complete his investigation, he'd invent it and then include it as incidental to the investigation on zinc. He's never really understood our recent divergence in purpose over the power tube. That we should make it soak up power from Sol was incidental and useful only as a lever or means to make Terran Electric give us our way. He'd have forgotten it, I'll bet, since it was not the ultimate goal of the investigation."

"He knows his stuff, though."

"Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the practical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his eating and sleeping."

"What are we going to do about him?"

"Absolutely nothing. You aren't like him—"

"I hope not."

"And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?"

"That I'm against!" chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then the other. "No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all that the solar system can stand."

"Walt and I are pretty much alike."

"Uh-huh. You are. That's as it should be. You balance one another nicely. You couldn't use another like you. You're speaking of Wes Farrell?"

"Right."

"Leave him alone," said Arden sagely. "He's good as he is. To make him similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He'd then be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He doesn't think as you do, but instead proceeds in a straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion. Anything that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered and forgotten. That's where you come in, fellows. Inspect his by-products. They may be darned useful."

"O.K. Anybody care for a drink?"

"Yup. All of us," said Arden.

"Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?"

"I hired her," grinned Channing. "She used to make all my stenographic mistakes, remember?"

"And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh. I recall. Some luck."

"It was my charm."

"Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn't he threaten you with something terrible if you didn't marry him?"

"You tell him," grinned Channing. "I've got work to do."

Channing left the establishment known as Joe's and advertised as the "Best bar in twenty-seven million miles, minimum," and made his way toward his office slowly. He didn't reach it. Not right away. He was intercepted by Charley Thomas who invited him to view a small experiment. Channing smiled and said that he'd prefer to see an experiment of any kind to going to his office, and followed Charley.

"You recall the gadget we use to get perfect tuning with the alloy-selectivity transmitter?"

"You mean that variable alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a selsyn?" asked Don, wondering what came next. "Naturally I remember it. Why?"

"Well, we've found that certain submicroscopic effects occur with inert objects. What I mean is this: Given a chunk of cold steel of goodly mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a few micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object."

"Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this reading and how do you make it tick?"

"We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to make us certain of our results. Watch!"

Charley set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took Don's hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals. "Sort of paint the wall with it," he said. "You'll see the deflection as you pass the slab of tool steel that's standing there."

Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive meter. "Wonderful," he grinned, as the door opened and Franks entered.

"Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?"

"Nope. She's just building up some other woman's chances. Have you seen this effect?"

"Yeah—it's wonderful, isn't it?"

"That's what I like about this place," said Charley with a huge smile. "That's approximately seven micro-microamperes output after amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We're either working on something so small we can't see it or something so big we can't count it. It's either fifteen decimal places to the left or to the right. Every night when I go home, I say a little prayer. I say: 'Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity, or at least no more than two decimal places' but it is no good. If He hears me at all, He's too busy to bother with things that the human race classifies as 'One.'"

"How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?" asked Channing, manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect.

"One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand microamperes. That's according to Ohm's Law."

"He's got the zero-madness too," chuckled Walt. "It obtains from thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be handy, some day. I'd like to develop it."

"I suggest that couple of stages of tube-amplification might help. Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation."

"We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I think. It'll take some working."

"O.K., Charley. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but it looks darned interesting."

"Yeah," added Walt, "it's a darned rare scientific fact that can't be used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?"

"I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of paper-work. Then we may relax."

"O.K. Sounds good to me. Let's go."

Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe. His finger stabbed at the marker button, and a series of faint concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to the object, which Murdoch read and mentioned: "Twelve thousand miles."

"Asteroid?" asked Kingman.

"What else?" asked Murdoch. "We're lying next to the Asteroid Belt."

"What are you going to do?"

"Burn it," said Murdoch. His fingers danced upon the keyboard, and high above him, in the dome of the Black Widow, a power intake tube swiveled and pointed at Sol. Coupled to the output of the power intake tube, a power-output tube turned to point at the asteroid. And Murdoch's poised finger came down on the last switch, closing the final circuit.

Meters leaped up across their scales as the intangible beam of solar energy came silently in and went as silently out. It passed across the intervening miles with the velocity of light squared, and hit the asteroid. A second later the asteroid glowed and melted under the terrific bombardment of solar energy directed in a tight beam.



"It's O.K.," said Hellion. "But have the gang build us three larger tubes to be mounted turretwise. Then we can cope with society."

"What do you hope to gain by that? Surely piracy and grand larceny are not profitable in the light of what we have and know."

"I intend to institute a reign of terror."

"You mean to go through with your plan?"

"I am a man of my word. I shall levy a tax against each and every ship leaving any spaceport. We shall demand one dollar solarian for every gross ton that lifts from any planet and reaches the planetary limit."

"How do you establish that limit?" asked Kingman interestedly.

"Ironically, we'll use the Channing Layer," said Murdoch with dark humor. "Since the Channing Layer describes the boundary below which our solar beam will not work. Our reign of terror will be identified with Channing because of that; it will take some of the praise out of people's minds when they think of Channing and Interplanetary Communications."

"That's pretty deep psychology," said Kingman.

"You should recognize it," smiled Murdoch. "That's the kind of stuff you legal lights pull. Mention the accused in the same sentence with one of the honored people; mention the defendant in the same breath with one of the hated people—it's the same stunt. Build them up or tear them down by reference."

"You're pretty shrewd."

Dark Man#Horror short story

My grandfather lies on his deathbed, he pulls me close and tells me of a terrible crime he committed many years ago and got away with. He also tells me that his freedom was the result of a spell he performed and that I should expect a visit from a dark man. "He will come out of the shadows," are his last words as he passed away leaving me wondering what to expect."Frank my beloved grandson I have something to tell you before I pass on. Back in 1921, I committed a most horrible crime, I got into a fight with an Austrian man with black hair and tiny moustache about him trying to sell me a painting a child of two could do without much effort. During this fight, I managed to kill him as he smacked his head against the fireplace breaking his neck instantly. I run from the scene and panicked, then I remembered an old spell from my childhood in Romania so I called through the eternal gates of hell Dark Man. Dark Man stood in front of me, right foot tall darkest of the dark shadow of a being I have ever seen. Then Dark Man told me through communicating thoughts to my brain, I will save you from your present fate in return for the price on your death your firstborn son will be mind to take over mind, body and soul to be among the human world once more to cause mayhem and next world war. So it was Dark Man who reversed time to back before I got involved in the fight with the Austrian guy she went on to live, so you see I killed Adolf Hitler but due to my panic I through Dark Man let him live and you how that turned out".I went over and over about my grandfather words until the dark man appears in front of him, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him off the ground with one arm. Dark Man speaks "Your soul is mine but if you wish to live I wish you to spore a new dictator for me one who is more untouchable, What is your reply , one wink for yes, two for no" I give one wink, Dark Man slowly puts me back on the ground. Dark Man then places his hand on my heart and says"You have made the right decision Mr.Trump".

Spiders #Horror short story

Through the other eye you can see the shadows, from the moonlight, of 100s if not 1000s of other spiders covering the tent.The man leans into you. There is a dark red almost black color to the whites of his eyes. He is so close his nose is almost touching your nose. You can feel his breath when he says, “We all have it in here. We are all infected these were the last words in a dairy I found written by the previous owner of the house I am at the moment I am residing in to hide from those spiders,I must keep my movements quiet as their hairs are able to pick up vibration . The spider's primary weapon is its chelicerae, a pair of jointed jaws in front of the mouth. Each jaw has two major parts: the basal segment, the bulk of the jaw, and the sharp fang housed inside of it.


Normally, the fang is retracted inside the basal segment. When the spider catches its prey, it swings the fangs out into the animal's body. The fangs work something like hypodermic needles. They have a small hole in the tip and a hollow duct inside. The duct leads to the venom gland, either inside the basal segment or farther back in the cephalothorax. When the spider pierces its prey with the fang, it squeezes out the venom, injecting the animal with enough neurotoxin to paralyze or kill. This makes it safe for the spider to feed on its prey, without the risk of a struggle, imagine hundreds of these attacking a human being and all you see for days on end is the mummified remains it hard to keep my sanity.

We were told about these spiders by the cryptozoologist around the world..



Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that aims to prove the existence of entities from the folklore record, such as Bigfoot, the chupacabra, or Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by the academic world: it is neither a branch of zoology nor folkloristics. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson...but it was ignored by the renowned scientific community whom now are among the other mummified remains unless their were one of the so called lucky ones who like myself scratching a living and only travelling at night when the spiders lay dominant and trying to keep movements slow  and  quiet during the day.I hear them scurrying about inside the walls,I sealed all the possible places in my current hideaway with a mixture of superglue,but it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep them out.Suddenly I see one of them..Dark red,white eyes,only the size of pin,this was a scout I must kill him before the swarm come,but it's too late hundreds of them appear from the tiny cream in the floorboards i missed.Before I can start to run I feel hundreds of hungry minute teeth sink into my legs,I am doomed the venom is too quick to counteract,I call to the ground I am now only a cadaver waiting to be mummified ,eaten by the pin sized spiders.the end.

Recoil by George o Smith #Sc Fi

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Recoil, by George O. Smith

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Recoil

Author: George O. Smith

Release Date: May 6, 2022 [eBook #68006]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOIL ***

RecoilBy George O. Smith

Illustrated by Orban

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1943.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Walter Franks sat in the director's office; his feet on the director's desk. He was smoking one of the director's cigarettes. He was drinking the director's liquor, filched shamelessly from the director's private filing cabinet where it reposed in the drawer marked "S." Drawer "B" would have given beer, but Walt preferred Scotch.

He leaned forward and tossed the director's cigarette into the director's wastebasket and then he pressed the button on the desk and looked up.

But it was not the director's secretary who entered. It was his own, but that did not disturb Franks. He knew that the director's secretary was off on Mars enjoying a honeymoon with the director.

Jeanne entered and smiled. "Must you call me in here to witness you wasting the company's time?" she asked in mock anger.

"Now look, Jeanne, this is what Channing does."

"No dice. You can't behave as Don Channing behaves. The reason is my husband."

"I didn't call to have you sit on my lap. I want to know if the mail is in."

"I thought so," she said. "And so I brought it in with me. Anything more?"

"Not until you get a divorce," laughed Franks.

"You should live so long," she said with a smile. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Walt thumbed his way through the mail, making notations on some, and setting others aside for closer reading. He came to one and tossed it across the desk at Jeanne. She took the message and read:

Dear Acting Director:

Having a wonderful honeymoon; glad you aren't here!

Don and Arden.

"Wonderful stuff, love," smiled Franks.

"It is," agreed Jeanne. A dreamy look came into her eyes.

"Scram, Jeanne. There are times when you can't work worth a darn. Usually when you're thinking of that husband of yours. What's he got that I haven't?"

"Me," said Jeanne slyly. She arose and started for the door. "Oh," she said, "I almost forgot. Warren phoned up and said that the turret is ready for a try-out."

"Fine," said Walt. "Swell." He unfolded himself from the chair with alacrity and almost beat the girl to the door.

"My," she laughed, "you can move after all."

"Sure," he grinned. "Now I have something for which to live."

"I hope it's worth it. You've sunk a lot of change into that bug-house."

"I know, but we can stand it. After all, since Don took over this affair, Interplanetary Communications is an up and running business. We're out of the Government subsidy class now, and are making money. If this works, we'll make more. It's worth a gamble."

"What are you trying to build?" asked Jeanne.

"Why, since this business of contacting ships-at-space has become so universally liked, we have a tough time keeping ships in the mobile beam. That's because they are always ducking out of the way of loose meteorites and stuff, and that screws up their course. We can't see 'em, and must take their position on the basis of their expected course. We never know whether we hit 'em until they land.

"Now I've been trying to devise a space gun that will blast meteors directly instead of avoiding them by coupling the meteor detector to the autopilot."

"Gonna shoot 'em out of existence?"

"Not exactly. Popping at them with any kind of a rifle would be like trying to hit a flying bird with a spitball. Look, Jeanne, top speed on the run from Mars to Terra at major opposition is up among the thousands of miles per second at the turnover. A meteor itself may be blatting along at fifty miles per second. Now a rifle, shooting a projectile at a few thousand feet per second would be useless. You'd have the meteor in your lap and out of the other side while the projectile is making up its mind to move forward and relieve the pressure that is building up behind it due to the exploding powder.

"I've designed an electron gun. It is a superpowered, oversized edition of the kind they used to use in kinescope tubes, oscilloscope tubes, and electron microscopes. Since the dingbat is to be used in space, we can leave the works of the gun open and project a healthy stream of electrons at the offending object without their being slowed and dispersed by an impending atmosphere."

"But that sounds like shooting battleships with a toy gun."

"Not so fast on the objections, gal," said Franks. "I've seen a simple oscilloscope tube with a hole in the business end. It was burned right through a quarter inch of glass because the fellows were taking pix and had the intensity turned up high. The sweep circuit blew a fuse and the beam stopped on one spot. That was enough to puncture the screen."

"I see. That was just a small affair?"

"A nine-inch tube. The electron gun in a nine-inch kinescope tube is only about four inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter. Mine, out there in the turret, is six feet in diameter and thirty feet long. I can fire out quite a bundle of electrons from a tube of that size."

"It sounds as though you mean business."

"I do. This is the right place to do research of that kind. Out here on Venus Equilateral, we're in a natural medium for an electron gun, and we've the power requirements to run it. I can't think of any place in the System that offers better chances."

"When are you going to try it out?"

"As soon as a meteor comes over the pike, as long as Warren says we're ready."

Jeanne shook her head. "I wish Channing were here. Things are wild enough when you are both working on something screwball, but I could get scared something fierce at the thought of either one of you working without the other."

"Why?"

"You two sort of act as balance wheels to one another's craziness. Oh, don't take that word to heart. Everybody on the Relay Station thinks the world of you two, myself included. Craziness in this case means a sort of friendly description of the way your brains work. Both of you dash off on tangents now and then, and when either one of you get off the beam, the other one seems to swing the weight required to bring the lost one back to the fold."

"That's a real mess of mixed metaphors, Jeanne. But I am going to surprise Don hairless when he gets back here and finds that I've done what people claimed couldn't be done. I'm going to be the bird whose bust sits in the Hall of Fame in between Edison, Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, S. F. B. Morse, and—"

"Old Man River, Jack Frost, and Little Boy Blue," laughed Jeanne. "I hope it's not a bust, Walt."

"You mean I should have a whole statue?"

"I mean, I hope your dream is not a bust!"

Jeanne left, with Walt right behind her. Franks did not remain at the desk, however, but made his way from the office level to the outer skin of the Relay Station by way of a not-often-used stairway that permitted him to drop to the outer skin. Above his head were the first levels of apartmental cubicles occupied by the personnel of Venus Equilateral. Out here, Walt had but a scant thickness of steel between him and the void of space.

His pathway was strewn with pipe, cable, and storage tanks. He passed a long-forgotten project and paused to reminisce over the days when a meteor shower had caused them some concern by puncturing the skin twice. The installation of a sponge elastomer under compression in this space had been stopped when a brilliant astrophysicist proved to Channing—then a supervisor in the operations laboratory—that the chances of being dangerously punctured were practically nil, and that the actual puncturing had done nothing but make people uncomfortably leery.

Then Franks came to a room built from outer skin to inner skin and about fifty feet in diameter. He unlocked the door with a key on his watch chain, and entered. Jim Warren was waiting for him.

"Hi, ordnance expert. We're ready as soon as they are."

"How's she working?"

"I should know? We've been squirting ropes of electrons out to blank space for hours. She gets rid of them all right. But have we done any good? I dunno."

"Not a meteor in sight, I suppose."

"The detector hasn't blinked once. But when she does, your electron gun will follow the darned thing until it gets a half thousand miles out of sight, or will pick it up a thousand miles before it gets here."

"That sounds fine. It's a good thing that we don't have to swivel that mess of tube around a whole arc in actual use. It would take too long. But we'll put one in each upper quadrant of a spaceship and devise it so that its working arc will be small enough to make it work. Time enough to find that out after we know if it works."

"That's something that I've been wondering about," said Warren. "Why didn't we build a small one out here and evacuate the skin for a few hundred feet? We could set up a few chunks of iron and squirt electrons at 'em."

"And have the folks upstairs screaming? Nope. I've a hunch that when this beam hits something hard, it will create quite a ruckus. It would be fine to have a hunk blown right out of the skin, wouldn't it?"

"Guess you're right," admitted Warren.

The meteor alarm flashed, and a bell dinged once.

"Here's our chance," snapped Walt. "We've about fifteen seconds to work on this one."

He looked out of a tiny window, and saw that the big tube had lined up with the tiny model that was a monitor for the big tube. He sighted through the model, which in itself was a high-powered telescope, and he saw the jagged meteor rushing forward at an angle to the Station. It would miss by miles, but it would offer a good target.

"Cathode's hot," said Warren.

Walt Franks grasped the power switch and thrust it down part way. Meters leaped up their scales and from somewhere there came the protesting whine of tortured generators. Through the window, nothing very spectacular was happening. The cathode glowed slightly brighter due to the passage of current through its metal and out of the coated surface. But the electrostatic stresses that filled the gaps between the accelerator and focusing anodes was no more visible than the electricity that runs a toy motor. Its appearance had not changed a bit, but from the meters, Walt Franks knew that megawatts of electronic power, in the shape of high-velocity electrons, was being poured from the cathode; accelerated by the ring anodes; and focused to a narrow beam by the focusing anodes. And from the end of the framework that supported these anodes, a cylinder of high-velocity electrons poured forth, twelve inches in diameter.

Through the telescope, the meteor did not seem to be disturbed. It exploded not, neither did it melt. It came on inexorably, and if the inanimate nickel and iron of a meteor can be said to have such, it came on saucily and in utter disregard for the consequences.

Frantically, Walt cranked the power up higher and higher, and the lights all over the Station dimmed as the cathode gun drained the resources of the Station.

Still no effect.

Then in desperation, Walt slammed the power lever down to the bottom notch. The girders strained in the tube from the terrific electrostatic stresses, and for a second, Walt was not certain that the meteor was not finally feeling the effects of the electron bombardment.

He was not to be sure, for the experiment came to a sudden stop.

An insulator arced where it led the high-voltage lines that fed the anodes through the wall. Immediately it flashed over, and the room filled to the brim with the pungent odor of burning insulation. A medium-voltage anode shorted to one of the high-voltage anodes, and the stress increased in the tube. It broke from its moorings, this low-voltage anode, and it plunged backward, down the tube toward the cathode. It hit, and it was enough to jar the whole tube backward on its gimbals.

The shock warped the mounting of the tube, and it flexed slightly, but sufficiently to bring the farthermost and highest voltage anode into the electron stream. It glowed redly, and the secondary emission raved back through the series of electrodes, heating them and creating more warpage.

Then the pyrotechnic stopped. Great circuit breakers crashed open up in the power room hundreds of feet above them, high in the Station.

Walt Franks looked out through the window at the tangled mess that had been a finely machined piece of equipment. He saw the men looking quizzically at him as he turned away from the window, and with a smile that cost him an effort, he said: "All right, so Marconi didn't get WLW on his first try, either. Come on, fellows, and we'll clean up this mess."

With the utter disregard that inanimate objects show toward the inner feelings of the human being, the meteor alarm blinked again and the bell rang. The pilot tube swiveled quickly to one side, lining up with the spot in the celestial globe of the meteor detector. Out in the turret that housed the big tube, motors strived against welded commutators and the big tube tried to follow.

Walt looked at the pointing tube and said: "All right! Go ahead and point!"

Don Channing smiled at Arden. "Mrs. Channing," he said, "must you persist in keeping me from my first love?"

Arden smiled winningly. "Naturally. That's what I'm here for. I intend to replace your first love entirely and completely."

"Yeah," drawled Don, "and what would we live on?"

"I'll permit you to attend to your so-called first love during eight hours every day, providing that you remember to think of me every half-hour."

"That's fine. But you really aren't fair about it. We were on Terra for two weeks. I was just getting interested in a program outlined by one of the boys that works for Interplanet, and what happened? You hauled me off to Mars. We stayed for a week at the Terraland Hotel at Canalopsis and the first time that Keg Johnson came to see us with an idea and a sheaf of papers, you rushed me off to Lincoln Head. Now I'm scared to death that some guy will try to open a blueprint here; at which I'll be rushed off to the Palanortis Country until someone finds us there. Then it'll be the Solar Observatory on Mercury or the Big Glass on Luna."

Arden soothed Don's feelings by sitting on his lap and snuggling. "Dear," she said in a voice that positively dripped, "we're on a honeymoon, remember?"

Don stood up, dumping Arden to the floor. "Yeah," he said, "but this is the highest velocity honeymoon that I ever took!"

"And it's the first one I was ever on where the bridegroom took more time admiring beam installations than he took to whisper sweet nothings to his gal. What has a beam transmitter got that I haven't got?"

"One: Its actions can be predicted. Two: It can be controlled. Three: It never says anything original, but only repeats what it has been told. Four: It can be turned off."

Arden caught Don on the point of the chin with a pillow and effectively smothered him. She followed her slight advantage with a frontal attack that carried him backward across the bed, where she landed on top viciously and proceeded to lambaste him with the other pillow.

It was proceeding according to plan, this private, good-natured war, until a knock on the door caused a break in operations. Channing struggled out from beneath Arden and went to the door trying to comb his hair by running spread fingers through it. He went with a sense of failure caused by Arden's quiet laugh and the statement that he resembled a bantam rooster.

The man at the door apologized, and then said: "I'm Doug Thomas of the Triworld News."

"Come in," said Don, "and see if you can find a place to sit."

"Thanks."

"I didn't know that Triworld News was interested in the wedded life of the Channings. Why doesn't Triworld wait until we find out about it ourselves?"

"Triworld does not care to pry into the private life of the newly wed Channing family," laughed Doug. "We, and the rest of the System do not give a damn whether Mrs. Channing calls you Bunny-bit or Sugar-pie—"

"Sweetums," corrected Arden with a gleam in her eye.

"—we've got something big to handle. I can't get a thing out of the gang at Canalopsis, they're all too busy worrying."

"And so you came here? What do you expect to get out of us? We're not connected in any way with Canalopsis."

"I know," said Doug, "but you do know space. Look, Channing, the Solar Queen has been missing since yesterday morning!"

Don whistled.

"See what I mean? What I want to know is this: What is your opinion on the matter? You've lived in space for years, on the Relay Station, and you've had experience beyond anybody I can reach."

"Missing since yesterday morning," mused Channing. "That means trouble."

"That's what I thought. Now if you were running the spaceport at Canalopsis, what would your own private opinion be?"

"I don't know whether I should speak for publication," said Don.

"It won't be official. I'll corroborate anything you say before it is printed, and so on. But I want an unofficial opinion, too. If you want this withheld, say so, but I still want a technical deduction to base my investigation on. I don't understand the ramifications and the implications of a missing ship. It is enough to make Keg Johnson's hair turn gray overnight, though, and I'd like to know what is so bad before I start to turn stones."

"Well, keep it off the record until Canalopsis gives you the go-ahead. I can give you an opinion, but I don't want to sound official."

"O.K. Do you suppose she was hit by a meteor shower?"

"Doubt it like the devil. Meteor detectors are many and interconnected on a spaceship, as well as being alarmed and fused to the nth degree. Any trouble with them will bring a horde of ringing bells all through the ship which would bring the personnel a-running. They just don't go wrong for no reason at all."

"Suppose that so many meteors came from all directions that the factors presented to the autopilot—"

"No dice. The possibility of a concentration of meteors from all directions all about to pass through a certain spot in space is like betting on two Sundays in a row. Meteors don't just run in all directions, they have a general drift. And the meteor detecting equipment would have been able to pick up the centroid of any group of meteors soon enough to lift the ship around it. Why, there hasn't been a ship hit by a meteor in ten years."

"But—"

"And if it had been," continued Channing, "the chances are more than likely that the ship wouldn't have been hit badly enough to make it impossible to steer, or for the crew to shoot out message tubes which would have landed on Canalopsis."

"Suppose that the ship ducked a big shower and it went so far out of course that they missed Mars?"

"That's out, too," laughed Channing.

"Why?"

"A standard ship of space is capable of hitting it up at about 4-G all the way from Terra to Mars at major opposition and end up with enough power and spare cathodes to continue on to Venus in quadrature. Now the velocity of the planets in their orbits is a stinking matter of miles per second, while the top speed of a ship in even the shortest passage runs up into four figures per second. You'd be surprised at what velocity you can attain at 1-G for ten hours."

"Yes?"

"It runs to slightly less than two hundred and fifty miles per second, during which you've covered only four million miles. In the shortest average run from Venus to Terra at conjunction, a skimpy twenty-five million miles, your time of travel is a matter of twenty-five hours add, running at the standard 2-G. Your velocity at turnover—or the halfway point where the ship stops going up from Terra and starts to go down to Venus—is a cool five hundred miles per second. So under no condition would the ship miss its objective badly enough to cause its complete loss. Why, this business is run so quickly that were it not for the saving in time and money that amounts to a small percentage at the end of each flight, the pilot could head for his planet and approach the planet asymptotically."

"You know what you're doing, don't you?" asked the reporter.

"I think so."

"You're forcing my mind into accepting something that has never happened before, and something that has no basis for its—"

"You mean piracy? I wonder. We've all read tales about the Jolly Roger being painted on the side of a sleek ship of space while the pirate, who at heart is a fine fellow though uninhibited, hails down the cruiser carrying radium. He swipes the stuff and kisses all the women whilst menacing the men with a gun hand full of searing, coruscating, violently lethal ray pistol. But that sounds fine in stories. The trick is tougher than it sounds, Thomas. You've got to catch your rabbit first."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that finding a ship in space to prey upon is somewhat less difficult than juggling ten billiard balls whilst riding a horse blind-folded. Suppose you were to turn pirate. This is what would happen:

"You'd get the course of the treasure ship from the spaceport, fine and good, by resorting to spies and such. You'd lie in wait out there in the blackness of space, fixing your position by the stars and hoping that your error in fix was less than a couple of thousand miles. It's more likely to be a hundred thousand miles, though. The time comes. You look to your musket, sharpen your sword, and see to the priming of your Derringers that are thrust into the red sash at your waist. You are right on the course, due to your brilliant though lawless navigator who was tossed out of astrogator's school for filching the teacher's whiskey. Then the treasure ship zoops past at a healthy hundred miles per second and you decide that since she is hitting it up at 2-G, you'd have to start from scratch at a heck of a lot better to catch her within the next couple of light years.

"So you give up, join the Congregational Church and pass the collection plate every Sunday."

"But suppose you took the course as laid and applied the same acceleration? Suppose you followed on the heels of your quarry until you were both in space? You could do it then, couldn't you?"

"Gosh," said Channing, "I never thought of that. That's the only way a guy could pirate a ship—unless he planted his men aboard and they mutinied."

"Then it might be pirates?"

"It might be," admitted Channing. "It'd have to occur near beginning or end, of course, though. I can't think of anything safer than being shot at out of a gun of any kind while both crates are hitting it up at a couple of hundred miles per second and at a distance of a few miles apart. It would be all right if you were both running free, but at 2-G acceleration, you'd have to do quite a bit of ballistic gymnastics to score a hit."

"Or run in front of your quarry and sow a bouquet of mines."

"Except that the meteor detector would show the position of the pirate craft in the celestial globe and the interconnecting circuits would cause the treasure ship to veer off at a sharp angle. Shucks, Doug, this thing has got too many angles to it. I can't begin to run it off either way. No matter how difficult it may sound, there are still ways and means to do it. The one thing that stands out like a sore thumb is the fact that the Solar Queen has turned up missing. Since no inanimate agency could cause failure, piracy is the answer."

"You're sure of that?"

"Not positive. There are things that might cause the ship to founder. But what they are depend upon too many coincidences. It's like hitting a royal flush on the deal, or filling a full house from two pair."

"Well, thanks, Channing. I'm heading back to Canalopsis right now. Want to come along?"

Channing looked at Arden, who was coming from the dressing room carrying her coat and he nodded. "The gal says yes," he grinned. "Annoy her until I find my shoes, will you?"

Arden wrinkled her nose at Don. "I'll like that," she said to Doug.

The trip from Lincoln Head to Canalopsis was a fast one. Doug Thomas drove the little flier through the thin air of Mars at a breakneck speed and covered the twelve hundred miles in just shy of two hours. At the spaceport, Channing found that he was not denied the entrance as the reporter had been. He was ushered into the office of Keg Johnson in record time, and the manager of the Canalopsis Spaceport greeted Don with a worried expression on his face.

"Still gone," he said cryptically. "Like the job of locating her?"

Don shook his head with a sympathetic smile. "Like trying to find a grain of sand on a beach—a specified grain, I mean. Wouldn't know how to go about it."

Keg nodded. "I thought as much. That leaves her out of the picture. Well, up to now space travel has been about as safe as spending the evening in your easy-chair. Hello, Arden, how's married life?"

"Can't tell yet," she said with a twinkle. "I've got to find out whether I can break him of a dozen bad habits before I'll commit myself."

"I wish you luck, Arden, although from that statement, it's Don that needs the luck."

"We came to see if there was anything we could do about the Solar Queen," offered Channing.

"What can anybody do?" asked Keg with spread hands. "About all we can do is to put it down in our remembrances and turn to tomorrow. Life goes on, you know," said Keg in a resigned tone, "and either we keep up or we begin to live in the past. Are you going to stay here for a day or two?"

"Was thinking about it," said Don.

"Well, suppose you register at the Terraland and meet me back here for lunch. If anything occurs, I'll shoot you a quickie." Keg looked at his watch and whistled. "Lordy," he said ruefully. "I didn't know how late it was. Look, kids, I'll run you downtown myself, and we'll all have lunch at the Terraland. How's that?"

"Sounds better," admitted Channing. "My appetite, you know."

"I know," laughed Arden. "Come on, meat-eater, and we'll peel a calf."

It was during lunch that a messenger raced into the dining room and handed Keg a letter. Keg read, and then swore roundly. He tossed the letter across the table to Don and Arden.

To the Operators of all Spacelines:

It has come to my attention that your ships require protection. The absence of the Solar Queen is proof enough that your efforts are insufficient to insure the arrival of a spaceship at its destination.

I am capable of offering protection at the reasonable rate of one dollar solarian for every gross ton, with the return of ten dollars solarian if any ship fails to come through safely. I think that you may find it necessary to subscribe to my insurance, since without my protection I cannot be responsible for failures.

Allison (Hellion) Murdoch.

"Why the dirty racketeer," stormed Arden. "Who is he, anyway?"

"Hellion Murdoch is a man of considerable ability as a surgeon and a theoretical physicist," explained Don. "He was sentenced to the gas chamber ten years ago for trying some of his theories out on human beings without their consent. He escaped with the aid of fifteen or twenty of his cohorts who had stolen the Hippocrates right out of the private spaceport of the Solarian Medical Research Institute."

"And they headed for the unknown," offered Keg. "Wonder where they've been for the last ten years."

"I'll bet a hat that they've been in the Melapalan Jungle, using the machine shop of the Hippocrates to fashion guns. That machine shop was a dilly, if I remember correctly."

"It was. The whole ship was just made to be as self-sustaining as it could be. They used to run all over the System in it, you know, chasing bugs. But look, Don, if I were you, I'd begin worrying about Venus Equilateral. That's where he'll hit next."

"You're right. But what are you going to do?"

"Something that will drive him right out to the Relay Station," said Keg in a sorrowful tone. "Sorry, Don, but when I put an end to all space shipping for a period of six weeks, Hellion Murdoch will be sitting in your lap."

"He sure will," said Channing nervously. "Arden, are you willing to run a gantlet?"

"Sure," she answered quickly. "Are you sure that there will be danger?"

"Not too sure, or I wouldn't take you with me. Unless Murdoch has managed to build himself a couple of extra ships, we've got a chance in three that he'll be near one of the other two big spaceports. So we'll slide out of here unannounced and at a peculiar time of day. We'll load up with gravanol and take it all the way to the Station at 6-G."

"He may have two or three ships," said Keg. "A man could cover all the standard space shipping in three, and he might not have too bad a time with two, especially if he were only out looking for those which weren't paid for. But, look, I wouldn't check out of the Terraland if I were you. Keep this under cover. Your heap is all ready to take sky from Canalopsis Spaceport and you can leave directly."

"Hold off on your announcement as long as possible," Don asked Keg.

Johnson smiled and nodded. "I'll give you time to get there anyway. But I've no control over what will be done at Northern Landing or Mojave. They may kick over the traces."

"Arden, we're moving again," laughed Don. "Keg, ship us our duds as soon as this affair is cleared up." Channing scribbled a message on the back of Murdoch's letter. "Shoot this off to Walt Franks, will you? I won't wait for an answer, that'll take about fifty minutes, and by that time I'll have been in space for twenty."

They paused long enough to stop at the nurse's office at the spaceport for a heavy shot of gravanol and a thorough bracing with wide adhesive tape. Then they made their way to the storage space of the spaceport where they entered their small ship. Channing was about to send the power lever home when the figure of Keg Johnson waved him to stop.

Keg ran up to the space lock and handed in a paper.

"You're it," he said. "Good luck, Channings."

It was another message from Hellion Murdoch. It said, bluntly:

To Donald Channing,

Director of Communications:

Considerable difficulty has been experienced in transmitting messages to the interested parties. I desire a free hand in telling all who care, the particulars of my insurance.

Since your Relay Station is in a position to control all communications between the worlds, I am offering you the option of either surrendering the Station to me, or of fighting me for its possession. I am confident that you will see the intelligent course; an unarmed station in space is no match for a fully armed and excellently manned cruiser.

Your answer will be expected in five days.

Allison (Hellion) Murdoch.

Channing snarled and thrust the power lever down to the last notch. The little ship leaped upward under 5-1/2-G, and was gone from sight in less than a minute.

Arden shook her head. "What was that message you sent to Franks?" she asked.

"I told him that there was a wild-eyed pirate on the loose, and that he might make a stab at the Station. We are coming in as soon as we can get there and to be on the lookout for us on the landing communications radio, and also for anything untoward in the nature of space vessels."

"Then this is not exactly a shock," said Arden, waving the message from Murdoch.

"Not exactly," said Channing dryly. "Now look, Arden, you go to sleep. This'll take hours and hours, and gabbing about it will only lay you out cold."

"I feel fine," objected Arden.

"I know, but that's the gravanol, not you. The tape will keep you intact, and the gravanol will keep you awake without pain or nausea. But you can't get something for nothing, Arden, and when that gravanol wears off, you'll spend ten times as long with one tenth of the trouble you might have had. So make it easy for yourself now and later you'll be glad that you aren't worse."

The sky blackened, and Channing knew that they were free in space. Give them another fifteen minutes and the devil himself couldn't find them. With no flight plan scheduled and no course posted, they might as well have been in the seventeenth dimension. As they emerged from the thin atmosphere, there was a fleeting flash of fire from several miles to the East, but Channing did not pay particular attention to it. Arden looked through a telescope, and said that she thought that she saw a spaceship circling, but that she could not be sure.

Whatever it was, nothing came of it.

The trip out to the Station was a monotonous series of uneventful hours, proceeding along one after the other. They dozed and slept most of the time, eating sparingly and doing nothing that was not absolutely necessary.

Turnabout was accomplished and then the deceleration began, equally long and equally monotonous. It was equally inactive. Channing tried to plan, but it failed because he could not plan without talking and discussing the affair with his men; too much depended upon their co-operation. He fell into a morose, futile feeling that made itself evident in grousing; Arden tried to jolly him, but Don's usually bubbling spirit was doused too deep. Also, Arden herself was none too happy, and she failed to convince herself, which is necessary before one can convince anyone else of anything.

Then they sighted the Station, and Channing's ill spirit left. A man of action, what he hated most was the no-action business of just sitting in a little capsule of steel waiting for the Relay Station to come up out of the sky below. Once it was sighted, Channing could foresee action, and his grousing stopped.

Charcoal burning response something spicy, 

Live on edge for infusion, 

Deep chamber lives a tiny shape shifter, 

Shun no leader needs new job, 

Permit allowed, wizard designs, 

Natural network gets bashed  

Sweet natured  sometimes exists,

Fractures of GP clobbered for not doing thier job,

Flower power people are disposable in today's society, 

Corpse delight leads to upset, 

You can not book creature on a crazy binge, 

Duck able to be a sco

Charcoal

Charcoal burning response something spicy, 

Live on edge for infusion, 

Deep chamber lives a tiny shape shifter, 

Shun no leader needs new job, 

Permit allowed, wizard designs, 

Natural network gets bashed  

Sweet natured  sometimes exists,

Fractures of GP clobbered for not doing thier job,

Flower power people are disposable in today's society, 

Corpse delight leads to upset, 

You can not book creature on a crazy binge, 

Duck able to be a scoundrel