The galaxy is at war, a war between the oxygen-breathing Terran Federation of worlds and the Ginzoes, chlorine-breathing aliens. Neither side dare attack the others' habitable worlds for fear of reprisals: the war has become a matter of spaceships firing on each other as they emerge from hyperspace. An Earth ship is captured in battle by the Ginzoes, and its surviving crew learn that the aliens have gained possession of a newly-developed catalyst. If dropped into the oceans of oxygen planets the catalyst can liberate the chlorine from the sea and convert them to chlorine worlds suitable for the Ginzoes. The catalyst will be used unless the Terran Federation declares peace within fifty days. Fifty days to save Mankind . . . or fifty days to doom!
Release date:
January 30, 2014
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
248
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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Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)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Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)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Temple of Death (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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 TormentedCity (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)
Waiting to die
The ship stank. A queer, nose-biting combination of human and mechanical odours that only a ship in space can ever really know. An acrid odour, sickening, nasty, tasting flatly in the mouth and seeming to permeate into every nook and corner of the great vessel. A combination of seared flesh and burnt insulation, of dried blood and seeping chemicals, of acrid fumes and human sweat. Mingled with it, part of it, the taint of rotting food and stale air grew steadily stronger, dimming the sweet-bitter smell of liberated energy and joining with the mounting stench of human life which has wallowed in its own waste for too long.
It was a peculiar smell, the kind of smell that only a space ship can ever know, and then only in special conditions.
The smell of a ship that has been in violent combat—and lost.
Carl Ranson rubbed the thick stubble coating his chin and blinked red eyes as he peered through the candle-lit gloom. They were ridiculous, those candles, something from the dim and distant past, relics almost, something to be wondered at and even perhaps laughed at. But when all energy had been drained from a ship, when the emergency lights had faded and even the glo-plates remained dull through lack of free electrons to illuminate their treated surfaces with brilliant fluorescence, the lowly candle had its uses. They guttered now, dim in the oxygen-poor air, and their tiny flames seemed a mockery to the eyes of men used to the flaring radiance of normal lighting.
Handley grunted and settled back on his haunches, his broad features glistening in the dim light.
“Any good?” Ranson leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the dismantled bulk of the generator. Handley shook his head.
“No. It would take a full sized workshop to get this thing working again. When they sucked the energy from us they ruined every electrical component in the ship.”
“I know that, but can’t you rewire it? The pile is still operating, all we need is something to transform the atomic heat into usable current.”
“It took three hundred years for men to learn how to do that efficiently,” reminded the engineer wearily. “It’s no good, Carl. This ship’s just so much junk now.” He stared at the young commander. “What are we going to do?”
“What can we do?” Ranson closed his sore eyes and leaned against the once-bright surface of a bulkhead. “When the Ginzoes caught us we’d just emerged from hyperspace. Conner saw them and fired the turret guns, for all the good he did he might as well have sprayed them with water. Two shots he fired, then they cut loose with their vortex guns.” He opened his eyes and stared at the engineer. “I don’t have to tell you what happened then.”
“They sucked the energy from us as if they were squeezing a water-filled sponge.” Handley swore as he kicked at the generator. “The insulation went. The fuses blew and the ship died. I heard Conner scream, just one scream, then he was roasted by the free energy. I thought that I’d been blinded, then, when I opened my eyes I was sure of it. You’ll never know how I felt when you came in here with a lighted candle.”
“Yes,” said Ranson, and his eyes were dull as he stared at the ruined generator. “The ship died, all of it, and I wish that we had died at the same time.”
Handley grunted, not answering, and together they stared at the tangled ruin of what had once been an efficient machine.
“Three of us,” said Ranson quietly. “Three left out of nine. Those vortex guns are very efficient.”
Again silence closed around them and in the deathly stillness the sounds of a man coughing echoed flatly against the smooth metal of the hull, The coughing seemed to go on for a long time, then, slowly and painfully, moving as a very old man might move, footsteps rang against the metal and a tall, thin figure entered the engine room.
He stood just within the door, blinking in the dim lighting his white hair a tangled mass over his high forehead. Age had stooped his shoulders and wrinkled his sere skin. Age had withered his hands and made his steps faulty, his bones brittle and his blood thin. But age had not dimmed the intelligence flaring in his pale, washed-out blue eyes. Against the broad figure of the engineer and the slender litheness of the commander he seemed almost a caricature of a man, a travesty of a human being, with pipe-stem arms and twig-like legs, and a disproportioned skull. He stood, the dim light reflecting from his pale eyes, and his voice echoed like the dry rustling of many bones.
“Well, Commander? When do we proceed?”
“We don’t,” said Ranson shortly. “This is the end of the journey.”
“Impossible!” Anger sharpened the dry whisper. “I must get to Deneb IV. I should have been there by now. Is this the way you carry out your charter?”
“No.” Ranson felt too tired to feel anger. “I accepted your charter with specific provisions as to enemy action. I am sorry Warren, but I’m afraid that you wm never reach Deneb IV. I doubt very much whether you will ever reach anywhere ever again. Except Hell, of course, that is the on only destination any of us can be certain of reaching.”
“Do not jest, young man!” Warren stared at the engineer. “Well? Can’t you do whatever it is that has to be done? Or are you as incompetent as your Captain?”
“I am human,” growled the engineer. “This is one spot your money can’t buy you out of, old man. This is the end of the line!”
“So you have failed.” The swollen head dipped a little as the financier stared at the young commander. “You took my money under false pretences. You are nothing but a cheap crook!”
“Steady, old man!” Ranson straightened himself from the bulkhead and his pale cheeks flushed with red. “I warned you what the dangers were before we left. I told you that if we were caught the Ginzoes would blast us. Well, we were caught, and they did blast us, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Nonsense!” The old man didn’t attempt to hide his sneer. “Everyone knows that you Free Traders have a working agreement with the enemy. In a way you’re neutrals, that is why I chartered you, to get me safely to Deneb IV. I could have gone by passenger transport with greater comfort and less cost, but I was willing to pay for immunity. How is it that we were attacked?”
“We were attacked because we are Terrans.” Ranson slumped wearily against the bulkhead again, his heavy lids drooping over his grey eyes. “What you don’t seem to realise, Warren, you and most of the other people on the safe planets, is that we are at war. It is a funny kind of war, but war just the same. The Ginzoes don’t want our planets, they couldn’t use them if we gave them away, and neither could we use theirs. We are oxygen breathers, they are chlorine breathers, the atmosphere of each would kill the other. Neither side has any use whatever for the possessions of the other—and yet we are at war.”
“I know that, young man. But they started it first.”
“Does it matter?” Ranson shrugged. “All I know is that it is one of the stupidest wars ever to be fought. We could blast their planets, of course, but then so could they ours. That was tried in the early days and twenty million people lost their lives on Alatair alone. It didn’t take long for the commanders to realise that planet-blasting was a double-edged weapon. They could do it—but they got back twice what they laid out, and now the war is fought strictly in space.”
“So?”
“So we were in space and they fired on us.”
“But didn’t you shoot at them?”
“Naturally, but this is a small vessel with only one turret. They had a warship carrying vortex guns. A cruiser might have been able to give them . . .
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