“Sorry, son,” MacCauley said with the barrel-scrapings of his patience. “I said no and I meant it. I haven’t got anything to give you. Now please stop waggling at me and go.” The excited glitter of th...

Duane’s hand flicked to his waist and hung there, poised. His dis-gun remained undrawn. The tall, white-haired man⁠—Stevens⁠—smiled. “You’re right, Duane,” he said. “I could blast you, too. Nobody wou...

Duane’s hand flicked to his waist and hung there, poised. His dis-gun remained undrawn. The tall, white-haired man⁠—Stevens⁠—smiled. “You’re right, Duane,” he said. “I could blast you, too. Nobody wou...

Whoever this man Andrias was, thought Duane, he was certainly a man of importance on Callisto. As he had said, he gave the orders. The crew of the rocket made no objection when Andrias and his men too...

Methodically he ransacked the drawers of Andrias’ desk. Papers, a whole arsenal of handguns, Callistan money by the bale, ominously black-covered notebooks with cryptic figures littering their pages⁠—...

But a sound from outside halted him. Together the two men stared at the viewplates. A siren had begun to shriek in the distance, the siren of a racing ground car. Through the gates it plunged, scatter...

Duane was in the sickbay again, on the same bed. His head was spinning agonizedly. He forced his eyes open⁠—and the girl was there; the same girl. She was watching him. A cloud on her face lifted as s...

The Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock. There was no reason why everything shouldn’t have been functioning perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, a...

Gordy survived the Three-Hour War, even though Detroit didn’t; he was on his way to Washington, with his blueprints and models in his bag, when the bombs struck. He had left his wife behind in the cit...

On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream. It was more real than any dream he had ever had in his life. He could still hear and feel the sharp, ripping-metal explosi...

On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream. It was more real than any dream he had ever had in his life. He could still hear and feel the sharp, ripping-metal explosi...

On the morning of June 15th, Burckhardt woke up screaming. It was more real than any dream he had ever had in his life. He could still hear the explosion, feel the blast that crushed him against a wal...

On the morning of June 16th, Guy Burckhardt woke up in a cramped position huddled under the hull of the boat in his basement⁠—and raced upstairs to find it was June 15th. The first thing he had done w...

It was Burckhardt’s idea and Swanson despised it, but he went along. He was the type who always went along. “It’s dangerous,” he grumbled worriedly. “Suppose somebody comes by? They’ll spot us and⁠—” ...

Swanson, after a single inarticulate sound, walked over to the desk and sat staring at the wall. Burckhardt rocked back and forth beside the shattered puppet on the floor. He had no words. The girl ma...

It was the morning of June 15th, and Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream. It had been a monstrous and incomprehensible dream, of explosions and shadowy figures that were not men and terror...

I am sitting on the edge of what passes for a bed. It is made of loosely woven strips of steel, and there is no mattress, only an extra blanket of thin olive-drab. It isn’t comfortable; but of course ...

Paptaste udderly, semped sempsemp dezhavoo, qued schmerz⁠—Excuse me. I mean to say that it was like an endless diet of days, boring, tedious.⁠ ⁠… No, it loses too much in the translation. Explete my r...

Paptaste udderly, semped sempsemp dezhavoo, qued schmerz⁠—Excuse me. I mean to say that it was like an endless diet of days, boring, tedious.⁠ ⁠… No, it loses too much in the translation. Explete my r...

This candy store is called Chris’s. There must be ten thousand like it in the city. A marble counter with perhaps five stools, a display case of cigars and a bigger one of candy, a few dozen girlie ma...

When I see what this flunky has done to them Leopards, I call him a cool cat right away. But then we jump him and he ain’t so cool. Angel and Tiny grab him under the arms and I’m grabbing the stuff he...

The front office thought the radio car would give us a break in spot news coverage, and I guessed as wrong as they did. I had been covering City Hall long enough, and that’s no place to build a career...

My occupation was “short-order cook,” as it is called. I practiced it in a locus entitled “The White Heaven,” established at Fifth Avenue, Newyork, between 1949 and 1962 CE. I had created rapport with...

It was very simple. Some combination of low temperature and high pressure had forced something from the seepage at the ocean bottom into combination with something in the water around them. And the im...

His name was Liam O’Leary and there was something stinking in his nostrils. It was the smell of trouble. He hadn’t found what the trouble was yet, but he would. That was his business. He was a captain...

His name was Liam O’Leary and there was something stinking in his nostrils. It was the smell of trouble. He hadn’t found what the trouble was yet, but he would. That was his business. He was a captain...

Every prison has its Greensleeves⁠—sometimes they are called by different names. Old Marquette called it “the canary;” Louisiana State called it “the red hats;” elsewhere it was called “the hole,” “th...

“I smell trouble,” said O’Leary to the warden. “Trouble? Trouble?” Warden Schluckebier clutched his throat and his little round eyes looked terrified⁠—as perhaps they should have. Warden Godfrey Schlu...

It was Flock on the phone to the warden⁠—Flock with his eyes still streaming tears, Flock with Sauer standing right behind him, menacing the two bound deck guards. Sauer shoved Flock out of the way. “...

Captain O’Leary dragged the scared little wretch into the warden’s office. He shook the con angrily. “Listen to this, Warden! The boys just brought this one in from the Shops Building. Do you know wha...

After O’Leary and the medic left, the warden tottered to a chair⁠—but not for long. His secretary appeared, eyes bulging. “The governor!” he gasped. Warden Schluckebier managed to say: “Why, Governor!...

Any prison is a ticking bomb. Estates-General was in process of going off. From the Greensleeves, where the trouble had started, clear out to the trusty farms that ringed the walls, every inmate was u...

Inmate Sue-Ann Bradley cried: “They’re coming! O’Leary, they’re coming!” The guards who had once been hostages clattered down the steps to meet the party. The cons from the Greensleeves were back in t...

Mooney looked out of his window, and the sky was white. It was a sudden, bright, cold flare and it was gone again. It had no more features than a fog, at least not through the window that was showered...

Mooney looked out of his window, and the sky was white. It was a sudden, bright, cold flare and it was gone again. It had no more features than a fog, at least not through the window that was showered...

Mooney stared at his napping guest in a mood of wonder and fear and delight. Time traveler! But it was hard to doubt the pale-eyed man. He had said he was from the future and he mentioned a date that ...

So there was Mooney, driving a stolen panel truck, Mooney the bankrupt, Mooney the ne’er-do-well, and now Mooney the accomplice murderer. Or so he thought, though the pale-eyed man had laughed like a ...

Mooney dreamed miraculous dreams and not entirely because of the empty bottle that had been full that afternoon. There never was a time, never will be a time, like the future Mooney dreamed of⁠—Mooney...

Time passed; and then time was all gone, and it was midnight, nearly the Nexus Point. In front of the hotel, a drowsy cabdriver gave them an argument. “The Public Liberry? Listen, the Liberry ain’t op...

Oh, clever Mooney! He crouched under a snowy tree, watching the man from the future speed effortlessly away⁠ ⁠… in the wrong direction. The cop was hailing him; clever cop! All it had taken was a coup...

The bar didn’t have a name. No name of any kind. Not even an indication that it had ever had one. All it said on the outside was: Cafe Eat Cocktails which doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it was a bar...

There was three of us⁠—I mean if you count Arthur. We split up to avoid attracting attention. Engdahl just came in over the big bridge, but I had Arthur with me so I had to come the long way around. W...

There was three of us⁠—I mean if you count Arthur. We split up to avoid attracting attention. Engdahl just came in over the big bridge, but I had Arthur with me so I had to come the long way around. W...

I locked the door of the hotel room. Arthur was peeping out of the suitcase at me. I said: “I’m back. I got your typewriter.” He waved his eye at me. I took out the little kit of electricians’ tools I...

I have to tell you about Vern Engdahl. We were all from the Sea Sprite, of course⁠—me and Vern and even Arthur. The thing about Vern is that he was the lowest-ranking one of us all⁠—only an electricia...

See, what we really wanted was an ocean liner. The rest of us probably would have been happy enough to stay in Lehigh County, but Arthur was getting restless. He was a terrible responsibility, in a wa...

The name of the place was Bayonne. Vern said: “One of them’s got to have oil, Sam. It has to.” “Sure,” I said. “There’s no question about it. Look, this is where the tankers came to discharge oil. The...

In Consolidated Edison’s big power plant, the guard was friendly. “I hear the Major’s over on your boat, pal. Big doings. Got a lot of the girls there, hey?” He bent, sniggering, to look at my pass. “...

Roget Germyn, banker, of Wheeling, West Virginia, a Citizen, woke gently from a Citizen’s dreamless sleep. It was the third-hour-rising time, the time proper to a day of exceptional opportunity to app...

Roget Germyn, banker, of Wheeling, West Virginia, a Citizen, woke gently from a Citizen’s dreamless sleep. It was the third-hour-rising time, the time proper to a day of exceptional opportunity to app...

Citizen and Citizeness Roget Germyn walked down Pine Street in the chill and dusk of⁠—one hoped⁠—a Sun Re-creation Morning. It was the convention to pretend that this was a morning like any other morn...

Engineering had long ago come to an end. Engineering is possible under one condition of the equation: Total available Calories divided by Population equals Artistic-Technological Style. When the ratio...

Half a world away, the midnight-blue Pyramid sat on its planed-off peak as it had sat since the days when Earth had a real sun of its own. It was of no importance to the Pyramid that Glenn Tropile was...

Citizen Germyn, as was his right by position and status as a connoisseur, helped prepare Citizen Boyne for his Donation. There was nothing much to it⁠—which made it an elaborate and lengthy task, acco...

Glenn Tropile and his sobbing wife passed the night in the stubble of a cornfield. Neither of them slept much. Tropile, numbed by contact with the iron chill of the field⁠—it would be months before th...

The way to Mount Everest, Tropile glumly found, lay through supervising the colony’s nursery school. It wasn’t what he had expected, but it had the advantages that while his charges were learning, he ...

Haendl plodded angrily through the high grass toward the dull throb of the diesel. Maybe it had been a mistake to take this Glenn Tropile into the colony. He was more Citizen than Wolf⁠—no, cancel tha...

Roget Germyn, of Wheeling a Citizen, contemplated his wife with growing concern. Possibly the events of the past few days had unhinged her reason, but he was nearly sure that she had eaten a portion o...

On Earth’s binary, Glenn Tropile had been reprogrammed for a new task. The problem was navigation. Earth had been a disappointment to the Pyramids; it was necessary to move rapidly to a more rewarding...

Haendl was on the ragged edge of breakdown, which was something new in his life. It was full hot summer and the hidden colony of Wolves in Princeton should have been full of energy and life. The crops...

On Mount Everest, the sullen stream of off-and-on responses that was “mind” to the Pyramid had taken note of a new input signal. It was not a critical mind. Its only curiosity was a restless urge to s...

Citizeness Roget Germyn, widow, woke from sleep like a well-mannered cat on the narrow lower third of the bed that her training had taught her to occupy, though it had been some days since her husband...

With a series of grinding shocks, like an enormous earthquake-fault relieving a strain, the Pyramids began to fight back. “Tropile!” the Alla-Narova mind called urgently. Tropile flashed to the troubl...

Tropile swam up out of hammering blackness into daylight and pain. It hurt. He was being born again⁠—coming back to life⁠—and it had all the agonies of parturition, except that they were visited upon ...

His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared. As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it; fo...

His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared. As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it; fo...

Someone else could. Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic⁠—and with the prayerful emotions of a st...

Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration. The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been and groped his way to it and, yes, ...

Hatcher’s second in command said: “He has got through the first survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?” “Wait!” Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troubl...

Some hundreds of light-years away, the Jodrell Bank was making up lost time on its Betelgeuse run. Herrell McCray swept the long line from Sol to Betelgeuse, with his perceptions that were not his eye...