The Space Opera Novella Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  THUNDER TO VENUS, by Joseph J. Millard

  THE LAST OUTPOST, by Nelson S. Bond

  MARTIAN ADVENTURE, by Robert Moore Williams

  A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL, by Cordwainer Smith

  THE SUPERSTITION SEEDERS, by Edward Wellen

  AND WE SAILED THE MIGHTY DARK, by Frank Belknap Long

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Space Opera Novella MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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  The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  “Thunder to Venus, by Joseph J. Millard, was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1942. Copyright © 1942, renewed 1970. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  “The Last Outpost,” by Nelson S. Bond, was originally published in The Blue Book Magazine, October 1948.

  “Martian Adventure,” by Robert Moore Williams, was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, October 1944.

  “A Planet Named Shayol,” by Cordwainer Smith, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1961.

  “The Superstition Seeders,” by Edward Wellen, was originally appeared in Infinity Magazine, December 1956.

  “And We Sailed the Mighty Dark,” by Frank Belknap Long, was originally published in Startling Stories, March 1948. Copyright © 1948, renewed 1976. Reprinted by permission of Lily Doty, Mansfield M. Doty, and the family of Frank Belknap Long, Jr.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  I love space opera. Galactic empires. Mighty heroes blasting their way to victory. Galaxy-spanning quests. They’re all essential ingredients. I started (as a young teen) with E.E. “Doc” Smith and Star Wars and have enjoyed the periodic resurgences of the genre (it seems to happen every decade or so). Frank Herbert. David Brin. Vernor Vinge. They—and many others—have written essential space opera novels (and I urge you to seek out their work, if you haven’t already. But you probably already have.)

  For those looking for space opera tales they probably haven’t read before, here are 6 novellas from the pulps of the 1940s and 1950s, where Space Opera was born—and quickly became a monthly staple for science fiction readers.

  Enjoy!

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  THUNDER TO VENUS, by Joseph J. Millard

  Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1942.

  CHAPTER I

  The Take-Off

  The Turtle squatted in her blast-off cradle, old and ungraceful Eternal Venusian fog writhed with tendrils of dirty cream around her bulbous glassite nose, enclosing her stark ugliness and her flaring sides in an opaque shroud.

  She sat like a poor relation, screened by the fog from the Administration Building and the sprawling acreage of Venus City Spaceport. Once, about eight years in the past, the Turtle had been known as the most modern rocket ferry in the System.

  Now she was a tub, one of five that made up Trans-Venus Ferries, smallest and least important of Titus Conway’s vast spaceline holdings. This subsidiary line bridged the nine-hundred-mile fogbound swamp between Venus City and Swampedge, on the South Highland.

  Technically, the Turtle was the CC-4, also known to the disillusioned pilots of the line as Conway Coffin Number Four. Designed and constructed on Venus to fly the soupy Venusian atmosphere, she was not a spaceship and had never seen the sun. She was simply an ugly, utilitarian old ferry boat.

  But to Lane Shannon, standing high on the pilot’s catwalk like a disembodied spirit in the fog, she was the most-beautiful craft ever flown. She was his first command.

  Ignoring the eternal drip and the steamy heat, Lane Shannon stood stiff and proud outside the control cabin, looking down at the line of passengers who materialized out of the fog to vanish into the big hulk. Vro planters and their families, salesmen, buyers, inspectors: all were bound for the culture plantations on South Highland. All were entrusting their lives to Lane Shannon’s skill and ability.

  Not bad, Shannon thought, grinning. Not bad at all for a young, guy of twenty-five, fresh from a junior berth on a Lunar freighter. And six months from now he’d be given full command of a big Conway cargo ship on the Earth-Venus run. This ferry line was the intermediate step, the proving ground for Conway captains of tomorrow.

  Beyond Shannon, shadowy inside the control cabin, Tubby Martin, maintenance chief, was completing tests, hand-pumping each plunger of the multiple throttle bank. Down at the Turtle’s tail, mechanics in glistening rubberoid coveralls were watching as each individual tube spat its tongue of flame into the inverted cup of a Johnson Repulsometer, to test for proper pressure.

  A whistle bleated, its echoes swallowed by the thick mist. The last passenger ducked into the hull and the gangplank rode eerily away. Down below, mechanics wheeled the Repulsometer away and ducked for the protection of the splash-awnings.

  Mack Drummond, Trans-Venus dispatcher, came out on Shannon’s catwalk, lumpy in his glistening slicker.

  “Your floating palace is ready to scram, sucker,” he grinned at Shannon. “And need I remind you that this hunk of rusty scrap iron costs quite a couple of dollars and is only valuable when fully assembled in one piece. Treat it kindly. A dollar doesn’t mean a bit more to Titus Conway than his right eye, both arms and his only daughter.”

  “I’ll treasure it,” Shannon chuckled, half seriously, and reached for the sign-out book. “Any special orders?”

  “Nope. Except to keep the high trajectory over Moulin Range. Besides fifty-three paying passengers and five dead-heads, you’re hauling eighteen caterocket tractors on the keel flat, which is about ten thousand pounds’ overload. And don’t get excited if the beam cuts out on you a time or two.

  “Old ‘Tight-Pants’ Conway’ll spend a million bucks to steal somebody’s freight line legally—but try and get the fifty bucks I, need to repair my transmitter
! If the beam dies, just hold your course and it’ll come back as fast as I can fix it.”

  “Okay,” Shannon nodded. “But try not to cut me out over Morgreb Gap. That cross-wind through there must hit at least three hundred miles an hour.”

  Tubby Martin, climbing out onto the walk beside them, made a grimace.

  “Three-twenty, measured velocity,” he growled. “And how these crates will drift when that crosswind hits ’em! Your motors check okay—by Conway standards, which ignore a little matter of eight percent pressure loss on Number Four Ring and tubes a thousand hours overdue for grinding.”

  “How’s my mush?” Shannon asked.

  “Rotten,” Martin said flatly. “Every other outfit in the System has switched to that new High-X Superfuel. When they threw out their old Standard mush, Conway bought it up at a bargain and we’re stuck with it. It’s five years old, lumpy and full of mush-bugs.

  “But what’s that against a dollar-ten-a-hundred discount? If a lump clogs your main jet feed, you’ll be hunting for the bottom of Bottomless Swamp. Good luck, anyhow,” he added sourly.

  “Thanks.” Shannon opened the door to the control cabin.

  “How’s the fever now?” Drummond asked seriously. “Did you do what I told you to?”

  Shannon nodded. Recovering from the usual newcomer’s attack of Venus fever, he still suffered occasional spasms of wracking chills.

  “Yeah. I slipped back of your communibeam panel and took a healthy snort of bak-bak, as you suggested. Man, that’s liquid fire!”

  “Okay. But I hope none of Conway’s spotters saw you. He loves to fire pilots for drinking on duty, because then the law gives him the right to snatch their pension fund. Well, happy blasting, sucker.”

  Still grinning, Shannon dogged home the glassite port, glanced over his controls and settled himself into the pilot’s bucket. Drummond and Martin vanished into the fog, followed a moment later by the retreating catwalk. On the control board, a buzzer whirred and a red light glowed. Shannon cut in the ignition and felt the shudder as the tubes fired. He idled them a moment, waiting.

  The buzzer stopped and the red light turned to green. With excitement tightening his throat, Shannon shoved in the Bolton bar that simultaneously depressed the thirty-six individual tube throttles. With a roar of choked thunder, the big ferry seemed to crouch, trembling, and then hurl itself up into the wall of fog. They were off—off on the maiden flight of Lane Shannon’s first command.

  * * * *

  The sharpest thrill wore off in half an hour. There was really nothing to do. The beam-activated robot pilot handled controls, maintaining course and altitude. There was no scenery to watch, nothing but eternal dirty fog on all sides.

  Shannon yawned, slid open the control room door and looked down at his passengers. Fifty-eight people sleeping, visiting, reading with calm confidence in their pilot.

  He turned back, grinning to himself—and the whole picture had changed. The fog, no longer meeting the rocket ferry head-on, was whipping furiously across the Turtle’s path, slashing wetly at the glassite nose with a force that rocked the ship. The soft whine of the beam signal was suddenly rising and falling as the old tub yawed off course and was constantly jerked back by the robot.

  “Morgreb Gap,” Shannon whispered. “Beam, don’t fail me now!”

  He laid a sensitive hand on the manual controls, ready to take over in an instant. There would be two hundred miles of this howling fury, then quiet again beyond Moulin Range.

  His mind pictured the two-hundred-mile chasm, gaping a thousand miles across the face of Venus, dividing the horrors of Bottomless Swamp from the unclimbed heights of Moulin Range. A gigantic funnel that gathered, all the roaring winds of one hemisphere and hurled them shrieking across to the other.

  Too long to be encircled, Morgreb Gap had to be crossed for regular service between Venus City and the South Highlands. A mad maelstrom where incredible winds yelled through the swamp and the jutting rocks. Where no human foot had ever trod. Where, so far, thanks to the fear-born skill of Conway pilots, no ferry had ever landed.

  Shannon sat tensely, remembering everything his instructor had taught him on the previous guided trip to acquaint him with his new run. There wasn’t anything to do, actually, unless the beam died—

  It did! With no warning at all, the drone signal blanked out and the controls bucked under Shannon’s hand. Deprived of its invisible track, the ship screamed off on a wide tangent, driven by the wind, fog shredding away before its nose.

  Shannon knew a moment of icy panic. Then he was hunched in the bucket, fighting the controls, kicking the left nose-jet bar to swing back onto the lost course. Eventually, flying by instruments, he could find and hold the narrow channel of the pass. But long before then, the broken transmitter should be repaired, taking over the job for him. Nothing to worry about yet, beyond some lost time—

  And then the stern rockets went dead!

  They stuttered, blurped, fired spasmodically for a few seconds and then quit cold. Tubby Martin’s fear of a clog in the feed line, due to lumpy mush, had been justified. Deprived of driving force, the big ferry slanted down, pitching and rolling as the wind clawed at its atmosphere vanes.

  With his throat dry, Shannon jazzed the Bolton bar with his right hand while his left pumped frantically at the emergency ignition booster, building up an arc that would flame through the obstruction and clear the feed line.

  They were tail to the wind now, screaming down Morgreb Gap, losing altitude. The booster arc cut in, flamed, heated the lump of age-hardened fuel to incandescence. The stern tubes blew out the clog with a thunderous roar—and the tail wind caught the flaming gasses and drove them back into the tubes.

  With a single, shuddering rumble the whole rocket assembly blew out.

  In the screaming silence that followed, Shannon heard the frightened cries of his passengers blending with the storm’s banshee wail. Someone pounded on the locked control cabin door and a man’s voice, hoarse with terror, bawled incoherent questions. A woman’s scream lifted shrilly as the ferry, out of control, lurched into a side roll.

  Shannon ignored the cries, wrestling furiously with the sluggish air-vane levers. Though the big wings were designed only as auxiliaries, to take some of the load off the rockets, they did enable Shannon finally to stop the roll and achieve a steep glide. Beyond that, there was nothing to do.

  Fog misted the glassite panes. Panting and sweating, Shannon slid one open, taking the beating fury of the hot vapor in his face as he tried to look ahead.

  Thank heaven, the wind was astern! To have opened the port while facing that steaming hurricane would have been suicide. As it was, Shannon was nearly suffocated but he had to see—to try to see—what the fogged panes concealed.

  A crash was inevitable. But if he could glimpse the nature of the ground in time, he might ease the impact with still-usable nose jets. The initial momentum of the big craft had carried them beyond the center of Morgreb Gap and the gale was less violent now.

  Suddenly a wall of darkness loomed ahead. For a moment Shannon thought it was a rock escarpment and braced for a crash.

  Then they plowed into it and he saw that it, too, was fog. But like no fog he had ever seen. It was a dark, ugly green, thick and oily, pouring sluggishly up from some fissure in the weird land below. It swirled around the ship, clinging with thick, sensate fingers. It boiled in through the open observation pane before Shannon could slam the panel. It crawled, thick and alien and vaguely sweet, over Lane Shannon’s face and into his nostrils.

  There was an instant of swirling, nauseous darkness. The pilot’s seat under Shannon tilted sharply, pressing him back, and then fell away. He felt the ship strike solidity with a jarring impact, slow and grind to a halt.

  * * * *

  He opened his eyes and something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Nothing was the same. The
seat beneath him, those little round ports where glassite panels had been a moment before, the cabin walls, the spidery limbs of a landing cradle stretching up outside—they were all different.

  He looked down—

  And he wasn’t in the CC-4 at all! This was the tiny, ten-passenger lifeboat and he was in it alone!

  Lane Shannon choked, caught at the seat rail, fighting the whirling blackness that clawed at his throbbing brain. He was dimly aware that behind him the port door was being pried open, that figures were crowding the opening.

  From a long way off he heard the voice of Mack Drummond.

  “It’s Four’s lifeboat, all right, but— Heaven above, it’s Shannon!”

  They crowded in, catching him, lifting him from the seat.

  “Lane! Lane! Are you all right? What happened? Where’s the ship? What happened to your passengers?”

  Shannon found a fragment of voice. “Wh-where am I?”

  “Why, back at Venus City Spaceport!” Drummond exclaimed. “But where have you been for the last five weeks?”

  CHAPTER II

  Branded

  They put Lane Shannon in the Venus City hospital. Trans-Venus paid the bills. Trans-Venus also supplied the best nurses and doctors, gave Shannon a private suite and treated him like a royal invalid. Though beyond weakness and mild shock, he seemed in excellent health.

  This wasn’t like Trans-Venus or Titus Conway at all. Generosity was not a Conway failing. Five days’ sick leave for a fractured skull would be more in character.

  It took Shannon several days to realize what they were doing to him.

  They gave him a lot of time alone. Time to think about what had happened. Time to realize that, somehow, five weeks had completely vanished out of his life. Incredibly, time had telescoped itself for him and the most important period of his life was missing.

  One moment he had been landing in the CC-4. The next moment, he had landed—but in a lifeboat, five weeks and four hundred miles away. There wasn’t even a recognizable gap in his memory, beyond that moment of blackness when he braced himself for the crash.