Reverse Universe

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

Originally published in 1952, Reverse Universe is another classic from pulp master E. C. Tubb, writing as Volsted Gridban.

Release date: December 17, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 98

Sample

The Dumarest Saga:

1: The Winds of Gath (1967)

2: Derai (1968)

3: Toyman (1969)

4: Kalin (1969)

5: The Jester at Scar (1970)

6: Lallia (1971)

7: Technos (1972)

8: Veruchia (1973)

9: Mayenne (1973)

10: Jondelle (1973)

11: Zenya (1974)

12: Eloise (1975)

13: Eye of the Zodiac (1975)

14: Jack of Swords (1976)

15: Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun (1976)

16: Haven of Darkness (1977)

17: Prison of Night (1977)

18: Incident on Ath (1978)

19: The Quillian Sector (1978)

20: Web of Sand (1979)

21: Iduna’s Universe (1979)

22: The Terra Data (1980)

23: World of Promise (1980)

24: Nectar of Heaven (1981)

25: The Terridae (1981)

26: The Coming Event (1982)

27: Earth is Heaven (1982)

28: Melome (1983)

29: Angado (1984)

30: Symbol of Terra (1984)

31: The Temple of Truth (1985)

32: The Return (1997)

33: Child of Earth (2008)

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Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)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Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)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)

The room hummed with the low murmur of power under perfect control, the faint clicking of relays as power flowed from banked photo-electric cells, a slight hiss from the refrigeration units, and a muted hum from the air conditioners. Geigers chuckled their inevitable warning, and from somewhere far below the sound of whining engines vibrated gently through the metal of walls and floor. The varied sounds mingled, lost their individuality and blended into a quiet drone. A sound that would be noticed only if it stopped.

Commander Hargreaves hoped it never would stop. While the sound continued he would be safe. All his command would be safe, and an outpost of civilisation would function as designed, but sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he woke in a sweat of fear, listening, listening, straining his ears for the reassuring murmur. He would be glad when retirement came.

Idly he let his gaze drift over the familiar room, the instrument-lined walls, the blank faces of the telescreens, the thickly shielded windows. He smiled at a man standing before one of the round ports.

“Gets you doesn’t it, Landry?”

“Yes,” said the man simply. “It does.” He turned from the window, a tall man, trimly uniformed in close-fitting black, the gleam of golden insignia showing from his wide shoulders. His hair was the same colour as his uniform and cut short as was the fashion. Grey eyes stared coldly from his stern looking face. He smiled grimly at the old commander.

“I’ve seen the sun a thousand times, and seen it closer from Mercury Station, but as you say, it still gets me.” He slipped into a proffered chair. “How long have you been here?”

“Too long.” Hargreaves cocked his head, listening intently, then smiled at the tall captain’s quizzical expression.

“I came when Mercury Station was still the nearest man-made thing to the sun. I was here when the first orbit station was launched, and I watched it as it fell into the sun. I’ve seen others launched, others fall to a flaming death, and I’m getting too old for much more of it.”

Landry smiled, noticing the thousand tiny wrinkles wreathing the old man’s eyes, the almost hairless scalp, the betraying tremor in the pudgy white hands. Once Hargreaves had been an adventurer, a man willing to laugh at impossible odds, now he was merely an old man craving a snug corner. A place where he could forget the blazing threat of a swollen sun.

He couldn’t be blamed. Men were not designed to stand the constant sight of a sun more than seven times larger than normal, nor were they intended to live on an arid cinder of a planet with over a thousand degrees difference between dayside and nightside temperatures. Mercury Station had been built on the narrow twilight belt, powered by photo-electric cells from the dayside, and cooled by the frigid gases from the nightside.

“You’ll be home soon,” he told the old man. “A little farm somewhere, a few chickens, maybe a cow. Is that what you want?”

“No. I want the cities, the feel of life around me, rain, the smell of civilisation.” Hargreaves grimaced, twisting his thick lips. “I’ll be a nightbird. Sleeping all day, and coming out when it’s dark. I’ll live in the arctic, feel the snow, and look at ice.” He sucked in his flabby cheeks. “I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel cold.”

“You’ll remember,” promised Landry, “and you won’t like it.” He looked at the old commander. “Can you tell me why I’m here?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. I understand I’m to captain an orbit station. I’ve done it before, and I’ve had experience of Solargation. Can you tell me more?”

Hargreaves looked down at his thick white fingers. “You’re in Security aren’t you?” He sounded painfully casual.

Landry laughed. “Yes, but don’t let that scare you. Security doesn’t always mean secret police. I was chosen because I have experience, knowledge of how to keep a secret, and because I’m a trusted agent of the Solar Federation.”

“Surely you have orders?”

“I have. I’m to place myself at the disposal of Professor Whitehead, using my own discretion and judgment to safeguard his life and his discoveries if any.”

“Then why not ask the professor?”

“I will, but I haven’t met him yet. I’ve only just landed and naturally you were the first person I contacted.” He smiled, a sudden warmth melting his cold features. “A man such as yourself, commander, can understand my desire to hear a practical opinion on what I have to do.”

The flattery worked. Hargreaves pursed his thick lips, nodded to himself, and looked at his companion. “You know that you are a replacement?”

“No. Am I?”

“Yes. The original man broke his leg,” Hargreaves chuckled. “Strangely enough he did it just after his interview with the professor, and knowing what I do, I can’t altogether blame him.”

“What do you know, commander?”

“Not much,” admitted the old man. “You know how these scientists are, half the time they forget that others exist, and the rest of the time they abuse us for not being as fanatical as themselves. Mercury station was built for observation purposes. It was the nearest that man had been able to get to the sun, and everyone thought it would be near enough. For a while it was, then they had to build the orbit stations.” Hargreaves snorted in disgust. “A sane man would have been satisfied with what he had. Sixty million miles nearer, and they had to try and cut it down another ten million. They lost three stations for each one they managed to get into orbit, nine ships, nine full crews. I watched them burn.”

Silence crept into the room, silence accentuated rather than diminished by the murmur that was the life-beat of the dome. Both men thought of the same thing, of helpless ships being sucked down by terrible gravity to the churning incandescence of the sun. Hargreaves shuddered.

“Sometimes I dream of those ships,” he muttered. “The hulls would go first, dripping into molten ruin. The air would get hot, reach boiling point, then the melting point of lead, then higher and higher. The crews would be dead by then of course, their blood boiled in their veins, their flesh roasted.”

“Yet they established the orbit stations,” reminded Landry. “They even managed to orbit closer to the Sun.”

“Yes,” admitted Hargreaves. “Nearer by six million miles, twenty million from the sun, but those stations proved useless for observation.”

“Naturally,” murmured Landry. “Their orbital speed was too great. To avoid being dragged into the dang. . .