THE DAUGHTER OF KAIFENG The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn't scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night - a whole MALACA barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons and building. That's what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more - a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up. A beautiful woman, a princess she called herself - but Kennedy had seen her before - lying in a processing vat on a Kaifeng planetoid of warped genetics. Between the scientific machinations of the galaxy's most perverted mind and the spectral realities of a disputed world there had to be a meaning that boded no good for Terra - and that's where Kennedy came in.
Release date:
September 29, 2011
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
124
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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Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)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Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)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Temple of Death (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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)
Lieutenant Charles Vickers woke up gasping, muscles jerking from the fading memory of a nightmare. Things had come to gibber
as he hung suspended over an open flame. Faces had blurred into spined encrustations, mouths wreathed with tentacles; appendages
had borne pointed scraps of chitin as sharp-edged and as hard as tough surgical steel. It was a bad time and he was well out
of it.
Glancing at the luminous dial of his watch, he saw that there were still four hours to duty-time. It was too long a time to
lie wakeful and too short to take a pill. Rising, he snapped on the lights, a delicate moonglow illuminating the small compartment
which held his bed, a table and chairs, a cabinet and little else. A shower was attached and he stepped into the cubicle,
setting the control for a hot blast followed by an ice-cold spray. Shivering, his skin goose-pimpling, he hit the hot-air
button and relaxed as the created wind dried and warmed his flesh.
He dressed carefully, checking the insignia before putting on the green, blue and silver uniform. A new-made officer, he was
proud of the silver bar, prouder still of the crest which held the figure nine. Commander Avery was a good man; only the best
could hope to rise in the MALACA which was his responsibility.
Again Vickers checked his watch. Three hours still to kill.
A narrow passage ran past the door of his compartment, Kell lights strung at intervals along the roof. The cold blue light showed other doors to either side and opposite, all closed, each compartment holding a sleeping man. He walked
softly to the end of the corridor where a stairway led to the level below.
At a desk the watch-officer looked up in surprise.
“Up early, Charles?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I had one hell of a nightmare.”
“About girls you couldn’t get?”
“No, about things that were getting me.”
Lieutenant Ormond smiled. He was old and grizzled, outranking Vickers by virtue of seniority, but he had come late to his
officer’s insignia.
“It happens,” he said. “I remember after we’d cleared up some trouble on Ecari I couldn’t get to sleep for a week. Every time
I closed my eyes I could see what the Elemquile had done to one of our patrols. Maybe you got it in indoctrination?”
“I did.” Vickers was grim. “Flayed and set out in the sun. Eyelids removed and paste smeared over the raw flesh to attract
sand-lice. And you were there?”
“I found them,” said Ormond grimly. “We hadn’t a hope in hell of getting them back alive—those that were still alive, that
is.” He looked at his hands. “I was senior non-com—our officer had been killed on the way into the hills. I had to make a
decision and make it fast.”
“And?”
“I killed them.” Ormond’s voice was harsh. “I burned the poor devils with a Dione. It was all I could do, as the inquiry agreed.
That’s why I couldn’t sleep.”
And that was how he had earned his commission, Vickers knew. The man had recognized the situation and had done what was necessary.
He had later found the hive of the Elemquile to take a bitter revenge.
Vickers said enviously, “At least you were in action, Brad. It was tough, I know, but you had real work to do.”
“Work I could have done without.” Ormond leaned back, understanding. “You’re young still, Charles, and impatient. It’s natural,
I guess. We all feel the same way at first—get in and clear up the mess and stop pussyfooting around. But it doesn’t work out that way. Most of the time a MALACA is just hanging around in space, waiting and watching.
That’s why I’m glad of something like this.” His head jerked toward a wall, the planet outside. “It breaks the monotony.”
Vickers grunted, knowing the truth of what the older man said, yet not liking it. Crossing to the window, he activated the
shutter and, as the metal slid upward, stared outside.
Epidoris was a bleak world. By daylight, when pierced by the savage glare of the tiny white primary, the deserts and hills
showed sere and harsh and the looming mountains held a sense of dread. Even the leaden ocean was a sullenly heaving mass of
gray water. At night, when the stars could be seen, the scenery took on a strangely disturbing appearance, as if things moved
just beyond the edge of vision, freezing when directly looked at, moving again as the eye drifted on.
But at darktime, when the great ball of the binary system’s dark star occluded the white dwarf, then the very air held mystery.
“Ghosts,” said Ormond from where he sat. “That’s what’s out there now. Things long dead, resurrected to walk again, stalking
the ground and jealous of those who now own what they once held.”
“Legends.”
“Maybe, but they are real enough for the natives. Not one of them ever ventures out at darktime. You know what their most
severe form of punishment is? To be thrown outside at a time like this, to wander alone and unprotected among the ghosts.”
“Nonsense,” said Vickers without turning. “I know they do it, but it’s still nonsense. A childish superstition. There’s nothing
out there but darkness.”
“You could be right.” Ormond, older and with more experience of alien worlds, was less certain. “But none of those who are
thrown out are ever seen again.”
“They could have got lost or been attacked by some predator.”
“Which only comes out at darktime?” Ormond shrugged. “You could be right about it all being superstition, but you’ll never convince them of that. And, to be frank, I
wouldn’t be too eager to go wandering at a time like this myself.”
Not that he would have to—the interdict was plain. At darktime all personnel were confined to stations and quarters. It was
courtesy to the local government, perhaps, but the rule was enforced by military discipline.
Vickers looked to where the dark star hung almost directly above. The surface held a dull crimson light, giving the appearance
of a smoldering wood fire thickly coated with ash. Around it shone a halo, a gleaming corona cast by its brilliant twin.
And darktime was not really dark. A host of stars threw a pale, nacreous luminescence over the distant town, the nearby bulk
of grounded units, the tower and administration block, the assembled machines and other barracks.
A bustling hive of activity by day and normal night, the station was now a scene of desolation.
Looking at it, Vickers whispered:
“A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e’er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!”
“Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” said Ormond. He had risen and now stood beside Vickers at the window. Quietly he continued:
“And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced;Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath …”
He broke off, shaking his head. “‘Kubla Khan,’” he said. “When he wrote it Coleridge must have had a vision of this place and what we’re here to. . .
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