From his observation post on a tree across the river from the western gate, Ras had seen the cage in front of the Great House. The bamboo cage had been about seven feet high and four feet wide. It had hung by a rope from a horizontal bamboo log suspended at each end on three hardwood legs. Both t...
Rip did not dare tell it. Rip hadn’t been asleep every day of those twenty years. At least, he didn’t think he had. Sometimes he wondered if the reality had just been pleasant, indeed, ecstatic, dreams mixed with nightmares. In A.D. 1772, Rip was th...
The three-o'clock rain had washed away the blood and the stink of gunpowder. The bodies were gone, and the sky was clear and blue. Business as usual was resumed but without about four hundred and fifty men and women. Half of these were in the rendering factory; the rest, in the hospital. Those wh...
Once be had been a creator, but the people ceased to believe in his creativity. He then suffered a divinity block, which is similar to a writer’s block. This is a sad fate for a deity. Odin and Thor, once cosmic creators, became devils—that is, critics—in the new religion ...
He moved slowly as if he had aged considerably overnight or was in great pain. He reported only a slight headache, however. Again, he asserted that he was innocent. ‘Rachel and I have had our trouble, no denying that,’ he said. ‘And she is very much attracted to you. I don...
He was lying on a soft bed. On the ceiling was a huge screen displaying a scene from the movie Peer Gynt, though he did not remember when he had seen it or who he was then. Gynt had been running through the mist-filled night on a moor studded with many firs charred to the trunk by a forest fire. ...
"I mean that Childe is the only Captain in existence. But he doesn't know it as yet." "Why not?" "Because he was born half-human and raised by human parents. Because a Captain has a delicate psychic con- stitution and must be handled delicately until he has fully matured. ...
I don’t know whether or not the pilot of the fighter jet saw me fall into the ocean. If he did, he probably did not fly down for a closer look. He would have assumed that, if the explosion of my amphibian did not kill me, the fall surely would. After hurtling twelve hundred feet, I should have be...
Since this city had the largest population of any on the planet, it should be the capital of the most important nation. The building itself was six stories high and made of some white stone with purple and red veins. From the air it looked like a three-leaf clover with a long stem. Its windows we...
Flames were crackling fifty feet away. Woodsmoke stung his nose and brought tears. Somewhere, men were shouting and screaming. Just as his eyes had opened, he had seen a piece of plastic falling from under his arms, which had been extended before him. Something struck his ...
As we approached it, he described certain features in answer to Holmes' questions. "So far, the only four-engined heavier-than-air craft in the world has been built by the Russians," he said. "Much to the shame of the British. The first one was built, and flown, in 1913. T...
RASTIGNAC THE DEVIL I After the Apocalyptic War, the decimated remnants of the French huddled in the Loire Valley were gradually squeezed between two new and growing nations. The Colossus to the north was unfriendly and obviously intended to absorb the little New France. The Colossus to the south...
“…intense investigation revealed that the suspected treasonous organization was on higher levels than the computized probabilities. It was learned that Diszno, Tuesday, General of the Organics Department of Los Angeles State, ID No. TLA-x/4529Y, was the chief of the subversive group calling itsel...