Three times had the scientific genius, Kaifeng, slipped through the hands of the men of FATE - and three times those equally fanatic guardians of the fragile structure of interworld peace had tracked him down again. But now Kaifeng had something that the Free Acting Terran Envoys had never met before. He had a ship beyond all previous capacities, he had a crew of dedicated devils, and he had FATE's finest operative as his hostage. And when FATE pursued him beyond the very Milky Way itself, beyond the Galactic Lens, things changed very rapidly - for out there Kaifeng had the means to enforce a stop to human progress - and he would not hesitate to use it! It's a super-space-thriller in the Star Trek tradition!
Release date:
September 29, 2011
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
156
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The Cap Kennedy (F.A.T.E.) Series (E.C. Tubb writing as Gregory Kern)
1: Galaxy of the Lost (1973)
2: Slave Ship from Sergan (1973)
3: Monster of Metelaze (1973)
4: Enemy Within the Skull (1974)
5: Jewel of Jarhen (1974)
6: Seetee Alert! (1974)
7: The Gholan Gate (1974)
8: The Eater of Worlds (1974)
9: Earth Enslaved (1974)
10: Planet of Dread (1974)
11: Spawn of Laban (1974)
12: The Genetic Buccaneer (1974)
13: A World Aflame (1974)
14: The Ghosts of Epidoris (1975)
15: Mimics of Dephene (1975)
16: Beyond the Galactic Lens (1975)
17: The Galactiad (1983)
Alien Dust (1955)
Alien Impact (1952)
Journey Into Terror (originally published as Alien Life (1954, rev 1998))
Atom War on Mars (1952)
Fear of Strangers (first published as C.O.D. – Mars (1968))
Century of the Manikin (1972)
City of No Return (1954)
Death God’s Doom (1999)
Death is a Dream (1967)
Dead Weight (first published as Death Wears a White Face (1979))
Escape into Space (1969)
Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)
Hell Planet (1954)
Journey to Mars (1954)
Moon Base (1964)
Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)
Pawn of the Omphalos (1980)
S.T.A.R. Flight (1969)
Stardeath (1983)
Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)
Stellar Assignment (1979)
Temple of Death (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)
Fifty Days to Doom (first published as The Extra Man (1954))
The Life-Buyer (1965, 2008)
The Luck Machine (1980)
World in Torment (originally published as The Mutants Rebel (1953))
The Primitive (1977)
The Resurrected Man (1954)
The Sleeping City (1999)
The Space-Born (1956)
The Stellar Legion (1954)
To Dream Again (2011)
Venusian Adventure (1953)
Tide of Death (first published as World at Bay (1954))
E. C. Tubb (writing as Arthur MacLean)
The Possessed (revised version of Touch of Evil (1957))
E. C. Tubb (writing as Brian Shaw)
Argentis (1952)
E. C. Tubb (writing as Carl Maddox)
Menace from the Past (1954)
The Living World (1954)
E. C. Tubb (writing as Charles Grey)
Dynasty of Doom (1953)
The Extra Man (first published as Enterprise 2115 (1954) & then as The Mechanical Monarch (1958))
I Fight for Mars (1953)
Space Hunger (1953)
The Hand of Havoc (1954)
Secret of the Towers (originally published as The Tormented City (1953))
The Wall (1953)
E. C. Tubb (writing as Gill Hunt)
Planetfall (1951)
E. C. Tubb (writing as King Lang)
Saturn Patrol (1951)
E. C. Tubb (writing as Roy Sheldon)
The Metal Eater (1954)
E. C. Tubb (writing as Volsted Gridban)
The Green Helix (originally published as Alien Universe (1952))
Reverse Universe (1952)
Planetoid Disposals Ltd. (1953)
The Freedom Army (originally published as De Bracy’s Drug (1953))
Fugitive of Time (1953)
To any normal man the laboratory would have been reminiscent of a tomb, a place buried, sealed, inviolate; impossible to enter,
almost impossible to leave. A grave and a prison both, analogies which Professor Jamil Makkofaides didn’t like to think about.
He sat in a deep chair before a curved panel loaded with instruments; dials, tell-tales which winked with a spectrum of light,
columns holding a milky luminescence. A large screen stood in the center of the consol. Below it rested the extensions of
remote-control handlers into which his hands were thrust. Flexible metal encased the flesh, tiny relays catching the minute
motions of bone and muscle, amplifying them, transmitting them via electronic impulse to where metal arms and fingers reached
into the compartment beyond the panel.
A portion of the laboratory which was sealed behind layers of metal, plastic and concrete. A bubble faced with glass fused
into a homogenous whole.
A bubble containing death.
Makkofaides looked at it as, enlarged, it showed on the screen. A tiny droplet of purple fluid held on the tip of an adamantine needle. Carefully he moved it towards a plate, arms and fingers aching as he lowered it to where
a smear of lambent crimson waited to receive it—a tiny egg taken from the breeding tank where captive jalects lived in sealed
isolation.
Gently the needle lowered, touched—too hard. The ruptured egg burst, spilling the results of two days effort in hopeless ruin.
Sucking in his breath Makkofaides lifted the needle, held it in the momentary blast of flame, sent more flame to sterilize
the operating slab. Again, concentrating, he manipulated the handlers.
At the third wasted attempt he gave up, fighting the irrational impulse to smash the apparatus, to beat his hands against
the instruments, the panel, in a fit of petulant anger. Instead he leaned back in his chair and palmed his eyes, forcing himself
to remember that he was a scientist and that failure was a natural component of research.
And yet there had been so many failures—and now this.
He looked at his hands, square, blunt fingered, the backs blotched with mottled patches of brown. A tell-tale sign of age,
and yet who but an old man would have consented to voluntary immolation?
“Jamil?”
The voice gave him the answer. Rocco Patsalibou was not old. He came from the living quarters with a young man’s tread and,
not for the first time, Makkofaides wondered why he had volunteered to accompany him in his isolation.
Ambition, perhaps? A facile answer and it could hold truth. If they achieved success then their reputations would be made, honors given, for the young man thirty years of studious effort leapt in a moment. He would be rich, professionally
secure, respected. A gamble in which he staked nothing but a few years of his life.
Years? Had it been so long?
Makkofaides blinked, conscious of the vagueness of his mind, a trait which was becoming more pronounced of late. Surely not
years. Months perhaps, a year at the most. One year or two?
Here, in this buried laboratory, time ceased to have meaning.
“Here, Jamil.” Rocco held out a steaming cup of tisane. “How does it go?”
“Badly.” Gratefully Jamil accepted the cup. The vapor rising from the delicate porcelain was fragrant with the tang of herbs.
“My hands—” He shook his head. “Three times I failed to inject the egg.”
“You’re tired, overstrained.” Patsalibou was quick with a soothing explanation. “You’ve been working too hard. Let me try.”
He was deft, Makkofaides had to admit that. And clever, that also he had proved on more than one occasion. The flelgrate series—he
had been the first to point out the dead end. And the choristath—more months wasted, as he had shown.
Rising from the chair, Makkofaides watched as the young man slipped his hands into the mouths of the remotes. On the screen
the extensions moved with a swift dexterity, the egg selected and placed, the needle dipped and hovering. A fraction of pause
and then the membrane was ruptured with decisive skill, the virus fed to the waiting culture.
Automatically he hit the button of the timer, waited as the hand swept around its circle.
“Now!”
Again, the deft manipulations of the remotes; the egg lifted, positioned, cut open and spread. Fire bathed the tips of the
extensions and then the screen flickered to added magnification, steadied to show a battleground of tremendous warfare; armies
engaged in savage, relentless destruction.
Purple against crimson, the warring hosts stained for easier identification.
Death against life—and death was winning.
As death would always win, thought Makkofaides bleakly. But natural death was one thing, the ravages of the virus he sought
to defeat was another. He remembered the palls of smoke over pits filled with flame, fires which had consumed the bodies of
the dead. Too many dead and too many fires. For weeks the air of Reyud had carried the stench of burning corpses, even the
blue-white flare of atomics seeming to leave that smell untouched.
Imagination, of course, nothing could survive the destruction of rended atoms; yet the sunsets had lingered and the dawns
had been remarkable. Dawns too few had seen, sunsets enjoyed for the last time by too many.
“Jamil!”
Patsalibou was excited. The hand he lifted to point shook a little with anticipation. Following it, Makkofaides felt a return of the hope which he had thought long dead.
The crimson appeared to be winning!
“Lux!” At his shouted order the lights brightened; cameras, always monitoring, now recording the instruments, the screen.
“Experiment 3425,” said Makkofaides. “A mutated strain of blethoraisia cultured in a jalect egg for two days; details of mutation
on previous record. After three minutes of exposure destruction of virus seems possible.”
“Certain!”
“Possible,” insisted Makkofaides. Older, he knew better than to yield to premature optimism. “We have been as close before.”
As close and even closer, but the result has always been the same. The thing from somewhere among the stars, the virus which
had become known as levive, had always conquered in the end.
An alien form of life, so small as to pass through the closest filter, so deadly as to be immediately contagious by touch
or by the inhaling of droplets of moisture vented by a cough, a sneeze. Alien because it had come from some unknown region
in space, because it seemed to have the power to mutate at will, to change, to devise novel forms of protection, to defy each
and every attempt to negate its voracious power.
A thing which recognized no master. A disease which had ravished a world.
Reyud . . .
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