Venus was a goldmine, a planet rotten with mineral wealth and unexploited resources, and tales filtered back to Earth and Mars, were whispered in the Domes of Mercury and wondered at in the dives of the outer planets. Venus was new and strange and a man, with luck and a little ruthlessness, could make his pile and retire to terrestrial luxury. But what if a man didn't have any luck? What if everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and left him stranded on a strange alien world? What then?
Release date:
April 30, 2014
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
127
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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Footsteps of Angels (2004) (previously unpublished work written c.1988)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Pandora’s Box (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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Starslave (2010) (previously unpublished work written 1984)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Temple of Death (1996) (previously unpublished work written 1954)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)
AGAINST THE dark of the Venusian night the spaceport was an oasis of light. From the high, wire-meshed perimeter fence, floodlights illuminated all the jet-blasted area, throwing the wide expanse of seared dirt into sharp relief, and making the smooth hulls of rocket ships gleam and shimmer a little as if they were things made from some precious stone.
Lights glowed from the roof and windows of the Administration building. More light shone from the lattice of the control tower, and from the peak of the tower itself coloured lights glittered like trapped stars.
The whole place was a sea of light.
Thorn stared at it, crouched beneath the wide leaves of a giant fern tree, his eyes, once clear and hard as polar ice, now dulled and sick with hopeless longing.
Something stirred beside him and a man, dressed like himself in tattered clothing with crude sandals lashed to his dirty feet and a matted beard, spat noisily on to the rich black loam.
“Well, Thorn? Why don’t you just walk in and ask for a passage back home?”
“That isn’t funny, Scrivner.”
“No?” Scrivner spat again and his laugh sounded like a curse. “Remember how we jumped ship, Thorn? How long ago was it now? Two years? Three? I’ve forgotten but it was a long time ago. We were going to get rich. We were going to find wealth enough to satisfy our wildest dreams, remember, Thorn? So we jumped ship and tried to find Eldorado. With money we could always buy a passage home. With money we could pay our fines for ship jumping, return to Earth, live easy for the rest of our lives. It seemed so simple, didn’t it, Thorn? So simple—like hell it was!”
“Shut up, Scrivner! I didn’t ask you to join me. It wasn’t even my idea when you found out Bronson’s plan you insisted on joining us. We didn’t ask you to come.”
“Bronson’s dead now. Dead and buried a long time ago. He’s well out of it.”
Thorn grunted, easing his cramped legs, not answering the short man at his side. He rose, stretching to his full height, then, with a final, longing stare at the waiting rocket ships, he turned and plunged into the jungle surrounding the spaceport.
Scrivner muttered something, swore, then fell into step at his side.
For a while they walked in silence, avoiding the thick boles of the fern trees and the swollen bulk of overripe fungi with the skill of long experience. Around them the jungle whispered to the night sounds of many creatures, the soft hissing of hybrid flora, half-animal, half-plant, carnivorous and deadly as they waited in their hidden lairs. Underfoot, scavenger beetles rustled as they scurried on their eternal task of disposing of dead animal and vegetable matter, and high in the great fern trees leaves whispered to the subtle motions of winged lizards and exotic insects.
In the distance a swollen fungus exploded with a dull boom, filling the heavy air with microscopic spores, and the two men tensed with the instinctive reaction to danger.
“No wind,” said Thorn quietly. “It might not even be a parasite, not many are this near to the spaceport.”
“Maybe not, but I’m not chancing it. Look what happened to Bronson! He took a chance and when we found him the beetles had stripped his bones. No, Thorn, let’s try the settlement.”
The tall man hesitated and Scrivner cursed with savage impatience.
“Hell, man, what’s the matter with you? No one will touch us there, and anyway, I need some human company, I’m sick of foraging in the jungles all the time.”
“I’m thinking of the hutment. You know what might happen if we’re away too long, the beetles will get in and eat everything we own.”
“Let them!” Scrivner spat again and turned from the original path. “It would be little loss. To hell with it all, Thorn. Let’s have a little fun while we’re still alive to enjoy it.”
Silently they plunged through the night-shrouded jungle.
The settlement was a huddle of shacks resting just outside the perimeter fence. Here the traders had their posts, bartering the produce of Earth for rare drugs and medicinal plants. Cheap knives, mirrors, glass beads, bolts of synthetic fabric and simple devices such as clocks and phonographs, all designed to break down in a predictable time, all shoddy, the rejects of Terrestrial factories.
In exchange the natives brought woven baskets of roots and seeds, wooden phials of crude perfume and rare drugs. Things of beaten metal and carved stone, priceless on Earth but plentiful here, and the hardeyed traders reaped rich rewards.
Here too were the Shebans, the drinking dens where rot-gut liquor distilled from native plants and fungi was served. Here the tourists came, the wide-eyed interplanetary travellers, and with them came criminals, men escaping from the penal code of other worlds, the drifters, the space rats, and a few, like Thorn and Scrivner, driven by the age-old lust for easy wealth.
For Venus was a gold mine, a planet rotten with mineral wealth and unexploited resources, and tales filtered back to Earth and Mars, were whispered in the Domes of Mercury and wondered at in the dives of the outer planets. Venus was new and strange and a man, with luck and a little ruthlessness, could make his pile and retire to Terrestrial luxury.
So scum of the System drifted towards the rumoured Eldorado. They landed, eager-eyed, tight-lipped, hard-fisted, and they died from parasitical fungi, from bone wrenching fever, and some died in strange and horrible ways deep in the unexplored jungles.
Venus had a habit of protecting her own.
Thorn paused at the edge of the settlement, his grey eyes searching the narrow, ill-lit streets between the huddled shacks, his dead-white skin glistening with the sweat of incipient fever.
Scrivner stared at him in the dim lighting, his little eyes glinting in the dim light from the scattered bulbs.
“What’s the matter, Thorn? Fever?”
“Yes. I’ll be all right after a while.”
“Maybe, but I think you need a drink, I know I do.”
Thorn shook his head, swaying a little as the fires within leapt and licked at his brain. Scrivner grunted and grabbed at his arm, pulling him towards a low-roofed, leaf-thatched hut. From the low doorway came the sounds of drunken laughter, the so. . .
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