The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04 Read online

  Halcyon Classics Series

  ASTOUNDING

  SCIENCE FICTION

  STORIES

  Volume 4: 50 Collected Novels

  by Various

  Contents

  THE INTERPLANETARY HUNTER

  Arthur K. Barnes

  ATLANTIDA

  Pierre Benoit

  THE COMING RACE

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  ISLANDS OF SPACE

  John W. Campbell

  IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN

  Robert W. Chambers

  CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME

  Samuel R. Delany

  THE SHORT LIFE

  Francis Donovan

  PHARAOH'S BROKER

  Ellsworth Douglass

  THE LOST WORLD

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  TEN FROM INFINITY

  Paul W. Fairman

  THE BLIND SPOT

  Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

  THE REVOLT OF THE STAR MEN

  Raymond Z. Gallun

  ANYTHING YOU CAN DO

  Randall Garrett

  MECCANIA: THE SUPER-STATE

  Owen Gregory

  A HONEYMOON IN SPACE

  George Griffith

  THE LOST CONTINENT

  C. J. Cutliffe Hyne

  THE YEAR WHEN STARDUST FELL

  Raymond F. Jones

  HUNTERS OUT OF SPACE

  Joseph E. Kelleam

  THE SYNDIC

  C. M. Kornbluth

  SPACE VIKING

  H. Beam Piper

  THE UNDERGROUND CITY

  Jules Verne

  THE WONDERFUL VISIT

  H. G. Wells

  TO MARS VIA THE MOON

  Mark Wicks

  AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF

  Richard Wilson

  FLATLAND

  Edwin A. Abbott

  CAPTAIN GARDINER OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICE

  Robert Allen

  LOOKING BACKWARD

  Edward Bellamy

  THIS CROWDED EARTH

  Robert Bloch

  MIZORA: A PROPHECY

  Mary E. Bradley

  THE COLORS OF SPACE

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  THE MIND MASTER

  Arthur J. Burks

  A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

  John Wood Campbell

  WARLORD OF KOR

  Terry Carr

  EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN

  Mark Irvin Clifton

  THE BEST MADE PLANS

  Everett B. Cole

  THE CRACK OF DOOM

  Robert Cromie

  BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT

  Raymond King Cummings

  THE SKY IS FALLING

  Lester del Rey

  THE JEWELS OF APTOR

  Samuel R. Delany

  THE VARIABLE MAN

  Philip K. Dick

  BROOD OF THE DARK MOON

  Charles Willard Diffin

  PALOS OF THE DOG STAR PACK

  J. U. Giesy

  THE MOUTHPIECE OF ZITU

  J. U. Giesy

  JASON, SON OF JASON

  J. U. Giesy

  SPACE PRISON

  Tom Godwin

  PLANET OF THE DAMNED

  Harry Harrison

  WEST OF THE SUN

  Edgar Pangborn

  MASTERS OF SPACE

  Edward E. Smith and E. Everett Evans

  * * *

  Contents

  THE INTERPLANETARY HUNTER

  Arthur K. Barnes

  THE HOTHOUSE WORLD

  Chapter I.

  The Ark

  Day again — one hundred and seventy dragging hours of throttling, humid heat. An interminable period of monotony lived in the eternal mists, swirling with sluggish dankness, enervating, miasmatic, pulsant with the secret whisperings of mephitic lifeforms. That accounted for the dull existence of the Venusian trader, safe in the protection of his stilt-legged trading post twenty feet above the spongy earth — but bored to the point of madness.

  Tommy Strike stepped out from under the needle-spray antiseptic shower that was the Earthman's chief defense against the myriad malignant bacterial infections swarming the hothouse that is Venus. He grabbed a towel, made a pass at the lever to turn on the refrigeration unit that preserved them during the hot days, shut off the night heating system and yelled:

  "Roy! Awake! Arise! Today's the great day! The British are coming! Wake up for the event!"

  Roy Ransom, Strike's assistant staggered into view, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  "British?" he mumbled. "What British?"

  "Why, Gerry Carlyle! The great Carlyle is coming today. In his special ship, with his trained crew, straight from the Interplanetary Zoo in London. The famous 'Catch-'em-alive Carlyle' is on his way and we're the lucky guys chosen to guide him on his expedition on Venus!"

  Ransom scratched one thick hairy leg and stepped under the shower with a sour expression. "Ain't that somethin'?" he inquired.

  "You don't look with favor on Mister Carlyle?" Strike chuckled.

  "No, I don't. I've heard all I want to hear about him. Capturing animals from different planets and bringing them back alive to the Zoo in London is all right. I'd like the job myself. But any guy that rates the sickening amount of publicity he does must have something phony about 'im." He kicked toward the short-wave radio in one corner of the living room.

  "Bein' so close to the sun, we're lucky if we bring in a couple of Earth programs a day through the interference. An' it seems to me every damn' one of 'em has somethin' about the famous Carlyle. Gerry Carlyle eats Lowden's Vita-cubes on expedition. Gerry Carlyle smokes germ-free Suaves. Gerry Carlyle drinks refreshen' Alka-lager. Pfui!

  "An' now we're ordered to slog around this drippin' planet for 'im, doin' all the work of baggin' a bunch of weird specimens for the yokels t' gape at, while he gets all the glory back home!"

  Tommy Strike laughed good naturedly.

  "You're all bark and not much bite, Roy. You're just as glad as I am something's turned up to relieve the monotony." He brought out his daytime clothes, singlet and trousers of thin rubberized material and the inevitable broad-soled boots for traversing the treacherous soft spots on Venus' surface.

  "Yeah?" retorted Ransom. "I can tell you one thing this visit'll turn up, an' that's trouble. Sure as you're born, Tommy, that guy's comin' here to get two or three Murris — he hopes! An' you know what that'll mean!"

  Strike's eyes clouded. There was truth in Ransom's remarks. Hunting for the strange little creatures called Murris never had resulted in anything but trouble since the day Sidney Murray co-leader of the first great Venusian exploration party, the Cecil Stanhope — Sidney Murray Expedition, first set eyes upon them.

  "Well," he shrugged, "we can stall until just before he's ready to leave and have some fun at least. Maybe he'll listen to reason."

  Ransom snorted in wordless disgust at this fantastic hope.

  "Anyhow," insisted Strike, determined to see the cheerful side, "even if there is any disturbance, it always blows over in a few days. I'm heading for the landing field. They're just about due."

  Tommy stepped outside into the breathlessly hot blinding mist, thick with the stench of rot and decay. Earthly eyes could not penetrate this eternal shroud for more than a hundred feet at a time, even when a wind stirred the stuff up to resemble the churning of a weak solution of dirty milk. Strike grimaced and thoughtlessly filled and lit his pipe.

  Thirty seconds later th
e air was filled with the thin screams and bangings of dozens of the fabulous whiz-bang beetles as they hurtled their armored bodies blindly against the metal walls of the station, attracted by the odor of tobacco. Strike flinched and hurriedly doused the pipe. A man couldn't even have the solace of a smoke on this damned planet. His life would be endangered by the terrific speed of those whiz-bangs.

  A few steps took him to the safety of the rear of the station, where abandoned calcium carbonate tanks loomed like metal giants in the fog. There was a time when it had been necessary to pump the stuff to the miniature space-port a safe distance away whenever a ship was about to land.

  There, sprayed forth from thousands of tiny nozzles high into the air, its tremendous affinity for water carved a clear vertical tunnel in the fog for the approaching spaceship pilot. New telescopic developments, however, rendered the device obsolete.

  Strike paced deliberately along the trail that paralleled the ancient pipeline — Earthlings soon learn not to overexert in that atmosphere — and before he had covered half of it his quick ears caught the shrill whine of a spacecraft plunging recklessly into the Venusian air-envelope.

  It rose to a nerve-rasping pitch, then dropped sharply away to silence. Presently, sounding curiously muffled and distorted through the clouds, came the noise of opening ports, the clang of metal upon metal, voices. Gerry Carlyle and company had arrived.

  He increased his pace somewhat and shortly entered the clearing that served as space-port. He paused to let amazed eyes roam over the unaccustomed sight. Gerry Carlyle's famous expeditionary ship was an incredible monster of gleaming metal, occupying almost the entire field, towering into the air further than the eye could reach in that atmosphere. Its green glass portholes were glowing weirdly from the ship's lights as they looked down upon the stranger.

  The craft was immense, approaching in size the giant clipper ships that traveled to the furthermost reaches of the System. Strike had never before been so close to a ship of such proportions. He smiled at the sight of the name on her bow — The Ark.

  The Ark, of course, was one of the new centrifugal flyers, containing in her stem a centrifuge of unbelievable power with millions of tiny rotors running in blasts of compressed air, generating sufficient energy to hurl the ship through space at tremendous speeds. The equipment of The Ark, too, was the talk of the System.

  Carlyle, backed by the resources of the Interplanetary Zoo, had turned the ship into a floating laboratory, with a compartment for the captured specimens arranged to duplicate exactly the life conditions of their native planets. All the newer scientific inventions were included in her operating apparatus — the paralysis ray, antigravity, electronic telescope, a dozen other things the trader knew by name only.

  His musings were interrupted by the approach of a snappily uniformed man who saluted, smiling.

  "Are you Mr. Strike?" he asked. "I'm sub-pilot Barrows of The Ark and very glad to meet you. Gerry Carlyle will see you at once. We're anxious to get to work immediately."

  This day was to be one of many surprises for Tommy Strike and perhaps the greatest shock of all came when he stood beside the sloping runway leading into the brightly lighted bow of the ship. For, awaiting him there, one hand outstretched and a cool little smile on her lips, stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  "Mr. Strike said Barrows, "this is Miss Gerry Carlyle."

  The trader stared, thunderstruck. In those days of advanced plastic surgery, feminine beauty wasn't rare but even Strike's unpracticed eye knew that here was the real thing. No synthetic blonde baby-doll here but a natural beauty untouched by the surgeon's knife-spun-gold hair, intelligence lighting dark eyes, a hint of passion and temper in the curve of mouth and arch of nostrils. In short, a woman.

  But Miss Carlyle's voice was an ice-water jet to remind the trader of earthside manners.

  "You don't seem enthusiastic over meeting your temporary employer, Mr. Strike. Something wrong about me?"

  Strike flushed, angry at himself and his own embarrassment. "Oh oh, no." He fumbled for words. "That is, I'm surprised that you're a woman. I — we expected to find a man in-well, in your position. It's more like a man's job."

  Sub-pilot Barrows could have warned the trader that this was a touchy point with Gerry Carlyle but he had no chance. The young woman drew herself up and spoke coldly.

  "There isn't a man in the business who has done nearly as well as I. Name a half-dozen hunters. Rogers, Camden, Potter — they aren't in the same class with me. Man's job? I think you needn't worry about me, Mr. Strike. You'll find I'm man enough to face anything this planet has to offer."

  Strike's eyebrow twitched. An arrogant female, withal. Terrific sense of her own importance, willful, selfish. He decided he didn't like her and rather hoped she had come looking for Murris. If so, she would learn one or two bitter lessons.

  There followed a five-minute interlude of scurrying about and shouting and unloading, all done to the tune of Gerry Carlyle's voice, which could crack like a whiplash when issuing commands.

  Then Strike found himself leading a small party back to the trading post. Now surprisingly Miss Carlyle showed a flattering attention to him.

  First she wished to know about the business of the trading post.

  "It isn't very exciting," its proprietor told her. "Mostly we sit around being bored stiff, playing cards or fiddling with the bum radio. Several times during a Venusian day our natives bring in a load of some of the medicinal plants we want. Occasion a rough gem of one kind or another, though Venus is very poor in minerals. The only stone really worth much to be found here is the emerald."

  "Surely there isn't enough profit in medicinal plants, considering transportation costs, to persuade a young man like you to bury himself here." She waved her hand around disparagingly.

  "There's profit all right." Strike shrugged. "The drugs distilled from some of the Venusian growths are plenty valuable. And then there's the adventure angle." He smiled wryly.

  "Plenty of young bucks are willing to sign a three-year contract for the thrills of living on Venus — if they don't know a thing about it beforehand. But it does take an awful lot stuff to bring a freighter our way. We seldom see a ship more often than three or four Earth-months apart!"

  "What in the world — or in Venus are those?" She directed his attention to the thousands of fungi now springing up through moist soil with almost visible movement. They were shaped somewhat like the human body and so pale that they might be a host of tiny corpses rising from their graves.

  The trader grimaced. He had never liked those things. Reminded him constantly that battle and destruction were watchwords in this hellhole, where the fang of every creature was turned upon its neighbor and even the plants had poison thorns while the flowers gave off noxious gases to snare the unwary.

  "Fungi mostly," he answered. "They grow and propagate amazingly fast. Many of the smaller life-forms here exist on a single day — they are born, live and die in one hundred seventy hours. Naturally their life cycle is speeded up. In hours all these puffballs will begin popping at once to spread their spores around. It's a funny sight. During the long night, of course, the spores lie dormant. And most of the larger creatures hibernate from the intense cold. Our night life up here is nil. This is strictly a nine-o'clock planet."

  She sniffed noting what all newcomers to Venus learn. Although the view is a drab almost colorless one, an incredible multiplicity of odors assails the nostrils — sweet, sharp, musklike, pungent, spicy, with many unfamiliar olfactory sensations to boot.

  Strike explained. On Earth flowering plants are fertilized by the passage of insects from one bloom to another, they develop petals of vivid colors to attract bees and butterflies and other insects. But on Venus, where perpetual mist renders impotent any appeal to sight, plants have adapted themselves to appeal to the sense of smell, therefore give off all sorts of enticing odors.

  So it went, question and answer, the pleasant business of getting ac
quainted, until the all-too-short walk to the station was over. But Strike was not deceived by the woman's sudden change of attitude.

  He knew that an interplanetary hunter of Gerry Carlyle's experience would certainly have read up on Venus before ever coming there. And he suspected she knew the answers already to every question she asked.

  She must have noticed Strike's disapproving eyebrow during the first moments of their meeting and had deliberately set out to ingratiate herself to promote harmony during her brief stay on the cloudy planet. The trader was willing to be friendly but he looked upon the woman with caution and distaste. Her aggressiveness was not to his taste.

  Chapter II.

  The Huntress

  Gerry Carlyle was decidedly a woman of action.