Sally McQuire worked for an unusual organisation. She was an undercover agent for the I.P.F., but her friends knew her only as a scatter-brained night club dancer. Then came the Thing. At first there were just off paragraphs in provincial papers. A cow disappeared. Fish stopped biting. Finally Jon Vardo, a shepherd, vanished without a trace. The I.P.F. put Sally on the track. She discovered a strange common denominator linking the events. There was a mathematical and geographical sequence. Sally arranged to be at the next danger zone, and then she too vanished. This is a story of humanity at its best, locked in a life and death struggle with a cruel, cold culture of Beings from the Beyond. This is a story of humanity fighting against incredible odds and fantastic weapons. Can the mind of man hold its own against deadly, sinister Intelligence from beyond the stars?
Release date:
July 31, 2014
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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DOORS. Swing doors. Inside the swing doors a luxuriously carpeted hall lined with brilliant, glittering plastic ornaments; things that rotated softly on slender, silken threads, for no apparent reason. Plastics that looked more like gold and silver than gold and silver looked like themselves. A magnificently uniformed commissionaire stood just within the sheltering warmth of that vestibule. No living man, not even the holder of the title Mr. Universe could ever have been provided by nature with a pair of shoulders of sufficient amplitude to have filled out that uniform. But what the commissionaire had lacked in natural endowment, had been compensated for by skilful padding There was enough gold braid on that uniform to have sunk three admirals and a couple of commanders, and the row of medals seemed to indicate that the commissionaire had won every conceivable campaign honour that had ever been awarded from Earth to Venus, across the sandy battlefields of Mars and back again. There was a moustache of incredible magnificence filling the central portion of face, it was almost equi-distant between the glorious gold braid of the cap and the high buttoned collar with its glittering flashes and studs. The commissionaire looked more like something out of a musical comedy, or one of those long-forgotten comic operas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries than any real commissionaire or any real old soldier. He was part of the luxurious presentation, the general larger-than-life-ness of the Double Orbit Club.
Beyond the commissionaire’s vestibule there were other pairs of beautifully balanced, photo-electrically operated swing doors. As patrons made their way carefully in and out, the doors operated as though invisible servants had their invisible hands upon the portals. Beyond this second set of doors was the bar. The bar out-did even the vestibule and the vestibule was magnificence itself. Barmen in jackets of impeccable whiteness, with not a hair out of place, and bland, friendly, almost seal-like expressions moved smoothly, swiftly and efficiently as they dispensed alcohol in a 107 different ways, forms and guises. They stirred cocktails; and they mixed cocktails, they shook cocktails and they vibrated cocktails. They provided alcohol with ice, alcohol without ice, alcohol flavoured with mint, or with ginger. Alcohol that owed its birth to rye, to barley, to oats, to potatoes, to oranges, to lemons, to almost anything in fact that could oid, earth-type drinks, there were thousands of weird and alcoholic concoctions that had come from more distant places. There was Martian slishsh; Venusian arghark; Martian eshashi, and Venusian Ogluk. It was also possible, if a man considered he had that kind of stomach, to drink Martian slishsh mixed with Venusian arghark, or Martian eshashi with Venusian Ogluk. It was possible, if you considered that your intestines were entirely cast iron, to mix slishsh, arghark, ogluk and eshashi together. It had been said that the difficulty of serving such a concoction was that no glass had been found powerful enough to hold it, and the barmen required danger money when they mixed them. Be that as it may, the concoctions were, nevertheless powerful, potent and paralytic!
Beyond the bar the interior of the building resembled a miniature theatre more than anything else, and yet was a cross between theatre and club. Hundreds of thousands of coloured lights swung and moved in glorious patterns of brilliance and intricacy from a magnificently decorated ceiling. The decorations were almost indescribable in the effect that they produced. One by one they could be described in detail but the overall gestalt could not be conveyed by such a description. Every conceivable shape known to art, every curve, every angle, every facet of design was there, and because of its over-all embracing quality the gestalt seemed to produce an impression of universalism. An impression, no doubt which the interior decorator had intended it to convey.
And yet, there was a more classical aspect to it. Here and there were illustrations from Shakespearian plays, a motleyed fool looking with amazement at the hideous mis-shapen form of Caliban, while in the background the scenery of the enchanted isle of Prospero was painted so realistically the club patron might almost have stepped from reality into the painted scene and not known what had happened to him.
The seats in this theatre-cum-club were the last word in scientifically designed luxury, deep and lush, really luxurious; the kind of seat which beckons to be sat upon. The kind of seat which calls a man to sink into its depths and to relax … and rest … and be comfortable, above all to be comfortable, and to be entertained.
The vestibule was first-rate. The bar was terrific; the theatrical interior decor was stupendous, superlative; but the entertainment which was offered there was one step beyond even that. Artists of the highest possible calibre from the three planets, Earth, Mars, Venus, brought the best of their talents and displayed them to the patrons of the Double Orbit Club.
It had a reputation second to none, and it had often been said that the compensation for a long space trip was a visit to the Double Orbit. It was situated as near as safety would allow to the launching pads themselves, in the miniature city that had sprung up around the Saharan launching base.
Four great highways spread out north, south, east and west, one linking the space port to the southern Mediterranean coast to the north of it, another away to the west linking up with the western shore of Africa; the road to the east linking up with the eastern coast, the great Asian trade routes and the oil power of Arabia; while that to the south ran down to join with the powerful African nations and the heart of the commerce, trade and industry of the mighty continent. Like the hub of a wheel the Saharan space port acted as the pivot around which industry, commerce, trade and enterprise spun at an ever increasing pace.
On the entertainment staff in the Double Orbit Club there were one or two who were popular that they had a permanent booking.
Normally it was a transient star who came and performed at the top the bill for a few weeks and then went elsewhere. But there were others who had become a tradition, and chief among them was Sally McQuire. She had no particular claim to artistic merit, for Sally was simply and unashamedly a strip queen. She performed a magnificent exotic dance that would have raised the temperature of any watching Eskimo until his polar cap had melted around him; that would have made the equatorial sun seem cool by comparison. Sally was a magnificent and vivacious red-head with a pair of flashing green eyes and a seductive smile that made a ticker-tape welcome seem like the cold shoulder.
Sally had just finished her third turn of the evening when the missionary came in. He looked round rather bewilderedly. The Rev. Alan Turner was a tall, broad-shouldered individual with penetrating dark grey eyes. His forehead seemed to crease into a frown of mild reproof as he looked at the luxury of the Double Orbit. His gaze ran swiftly and appraisingly round the faces of the patrons until it came to rest on a face which was a masterpiece of expression. It belonged to a gentleman who rejoiced in the name of Bill Dooley, as far as anyone could ascertain, but how Bill Dooley got the money to drink as he drank, at the prices which were charged in the Double Orbit, was anybody’s guess.
Dooley was in a semi-somnambulant condition for nine-tenths of his time. This was the one odd tenth when he was apparently hopelessly paralytic. He lay under the table, a seraphic smile around the corners of his well-oiled lips. Nobody, so they said, had ever counted the number of beers that Dooley got through, the number of Martian slishshes or Venusian argharks, of Martian eschashies or Venusian ogluks; it was incredible apparently. Of course, he fell. . .
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