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Title: Space Station 1
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Release date: October 23, 2015 [eBook #50290]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACE STATION 1 ***
SPACE STATION 1
by FRANK BELKNAP LONG
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
SPACE STATION 1
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U. S. A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
INTRIGUE IN EARTH'S OUTER ORBIT
Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big
Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon
found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors.
For the grim reality was that some deadly outer-space power had usurped
control of the great artificial moon. A lovely woman had disappeared;
passengers were being fleeced and enslaved; and, using fantastic
disguises, imposters were using the Station for their own mysterious
ends.
Pursued by unearthly monsters and hunted with super-scientific cunning,
Corriston struggles to unmask the mystery. For upon his success
depended his life, his love and the future of Earth itself.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
CORRISTON
He saw all the sights of the Space Station ... in fact, he saw too
much....
HAYES
His decision would mean the beginning or the end for a world.
CLAKEY
This bodyguard needed special protection himself.
CLEMENT
Sometimes it seemed as if he were leading a double life.
HENLEY
With him for a friend one didn't need an enemy.
HELEN RAMSEY
Her father had made her a virtual prisoner.
1
It was a life-and-death struggle--cruel, remorseless, one-sided.
Corriston was breathing heavily. He was in total darkness, dodging the
blows of a killer. His adversary was as lithe as a cat, muscular and
dangerous. He had a knife and he was using it, slashing at Corriston
when Corriston came close, then leaping back and lashing out with a
hard-knuckled fist.
Corriston could hear the swish of the man's heels as he pivoted, could
judge almost with split-second timing when the next blow would come.
He was bleeding from a cut on his right shoulder, and there was a
tumultuous throbbing at his temples, an ache in his groin.
The fact that he had no weapon put him at a terrifying disadvantage. He
had been close to death before, but never in so confined a space or in
such close proximity to a man who had certainly killed once and would
not hesitate to kill again.
His determination to survive was pitted against what appeared to be
sheer brute strength fortified by cunning and a far-above-average
agility. He began slowly to retreat, backing away until a massive steel
girder stopped him. He was battling dizziness now and his heart had
begun a furious pounding.
He found himself slipping sideways along the girder, running his hands
over its smooth, cold surface. To his sweating palms the surface seemed
as chill as the lid of a coffin, but he refused to believe that it
could trap him irretrievably. The girder had to end somewhere.
The killer was coming close again, his shoes making a scraping sound
in the darkness, his breathing just barely audible. Corriston edged
still further along the girder. Inch by inch he moved parallel to it,
fighting off his dizziness, making a desperate effort to keep from
falling. The wetness on his shoulder was unnerving, the absence of
pain incredible. How seriously could a man be stabbed without feeling
any pain at all? He didn't know. But at least his shoulder wasn't
paralyzed. He could move his arm freely, flex the muscles of his back.
How unbelievably cruel it was that a ship could move through space with
the stability of a completely stationary object. How unbelievably cruel
at this moment, when the slightest lurch might have saved him.
The girder was stationary and immense, and in his tormented inward
vision he saw it as a strand in a gigantic steel cobweb, symbolizing
the grandeur of what man could accomplish by routine compulsion alone.
In frozen helplessness Corriston tried to bring his thoughts into
closer accord with reality, to view his peril in a saner light. But
what was happening to him was as hard to relate to immediate reality
as a line half remembered from a play. _See how the blood of Caesar
followed it, as if rushing out of doors to be resolved if Brutus so
unkindly knocked or no...._
But the killer wasn't Brutus. He was unknown and invisible and if
there had been any Brutuslike nobility in him, it hardly seemed likely
that he would have chosen for his first victim a wealthy girl's too
talkative bodyguard and for his second Corriston himself.
The killer was within arm's reach again when the barrier that had
trapped Corriston fell away abruptly. He reeled back, swayed dizzily,
and experienced such wild elation that he cried out in unreasoning
triumph. Swiftly he retreated backwards, not fully realizing that no
real respite had been granted him. He was free only to recoil a few
steps, to crouch and weave about. Almost instantly the killer was
closing in again, and this time there was no escape.
Another metal girder stopped Corriston in midretreat, cutting across
his shoulders like a sharp-angled priming rod, jolting and sobering him.
For an eternity now he could do nothing but wait. An eternity as
brief as a dropped heartbeat and as long as the cycle of renewal and
rebirth of worlds in the flaming vastness of space. Everything became
impersonal suddenly: the darkness of the ships' between-deck storage
compartment; the Space Station toward which the ship was traveling; the
Martian deserts he had dreamed about as a boy.
The killer spoke then, for the first time. His voice rang out in the
darkness, harsh with contempt and rage. It was in some respects a
surprising voice, the voice of an educated man. But it was also a voice
that had in it an accent that Corriston had heard before in verbal
documentaries and hundreds of newsreels; in clinical case histories,
microfilm recorded, in penal institutions, on governing bodies,
and wherever men were in a position to destroy others--or perhaps
themselves. It was the voice of an unloved, unwanted man.
The voice said: "You're done for, my friend. I do Next |