Obviously the Archeologist’s study belonged to an era vastly distant from today. Familiar similarities here and there only sharpened the feeling of alienage. The sunlight that filtered through the win...

The coupe with the fishhooks welded to the fender shouldered up over the curb like the nose of a nightmare. The girl in its path stood frozen, her face probably stiff with fright under her mask. For o...

To be given paid-up leisure and find yourself unable to create is unpleasant for any artist. To be stranded in a cluster of desert cabins with a dozen lonely people in the same predicament only makes ...

The first angry rays of the sun⁠—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals⁠—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unco...

Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I’d just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing. You know, at first I thought it was a young lady....

“But it’s all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets.” Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She...

“Effie! What the devil are you up to?” Her husband’s voice, chopping through her mood of terrified rapture, made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminine self-control her bo...

The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt l...

The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt l...

The exterior of Martin Kesserich’s home⁠—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola⁠—was nothing like its lavish interior. In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed...

“Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?” Jack jumped s...

Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt an...

Same as yesterday, Mrs. Kesserich was sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room, yet from the first Jack was aware of a great change. Something had filled the domestic animal with grief and ...

White waves shooting up like dancing ghosts in the Moon-sketched, spray-swept dark were Jack’s first beacon of the island and brought a sense of physical danger, breaking the trancelike yet frantic mo...

The little cove was once again as quiet as time’s heart. Once again the Annie O. was a sloop embedded in a mirror. Once again the rocks were warm underfoot. Jack Barr lifted his fiercely aching head a...

The big bright doors of the office building parted with a pneumatic whoosh and Robie glided onto Times Square. The crowd that had been watching the fifty-foot-tall girl on the clothing billboard get d...

The sun hadn’t quite risen, but now that the five men were out from under the trees it already felt hot. Far ahead, off to the left of the road, the spires of New Angeles gleamed dusky blue against th...

From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, ...

The Professor was congratulating Earth’s first visitor from another planet on his wisdom in getting in touch with a cultural anthropologist before contacting any other scientists (or governments, God ...

As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products (“Spike to Loaf in One Operation!”) began to tread delic...

On Tenthmonth 1, 2457 AD, at exactly 9 a.m. Planetary Federation Time⁠—but with a permissible error of a millionth of a second either way⁠—in the fifth sublevel of NewNew York Robot Postal Station 68,...

The Invisible Being shifted his anchorage a bit in Earth’s gravitational field, which felt like a push rather than a pull to him, and said, “This featherless biped seems to satisfy Galaxy Center’s req...

Simon Grue found a two-inch mermaid in his bathtub. It had arms, hips, a finny tail, and (here the real trouble began) a face that reminded him irresistibly of Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich. It wasn’t ...

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere⁠—and I mean that literally⁠—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I’d been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugge...

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere⁠—and I mean that literally⁠—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I’d been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugge...

When I woke the light was almost full amber and I could feel no flesh against mine, only the blanket under me. I very slowly rolled over and there she was, sitting on the corner of the blanket not two...

Ordinarily scroungers who hide around on the outskirts until the killing’s done and then come in to share the loot get what they deserve⁠—wordless orders, well backed up, to be on their way at once. S...

For that matter we took off fast with the plane swinging to beat hell. Alice and me was in the two kneeling seats and we hugged them tight, but Pop was loose and sort of rattled around the cabin for a...

I am not going to try to describe point by point all that happened the next half hour because there was too much of it and it involved all three of us, sometimes doing different things at the same tim...

“And a long merry siege to you, sir, and roast rat for Christmas!” I responded, very out loud and rather to my surprise. “War! How I hate war!”⁠—that was what Pop exploded with. He didn’t exactly danc...

Pop was first down. Between us we helped Alice. Before joining them I took a last look at the control panel. The cracking plant button was up again and there was a blue nimbus on another button. For L...

Gummitch peered thoughtfully at the molten silver image of the sun in his little bowl of water on the floor inside the kitchen window. He knew from experience that it would make dark ghost suns swim i...

There are all sorts of screwy theories (the Professor said) of what makes the wheels of the world go round. There’s a boy in Chicago who thinks we’re all of us just the thoughts of a green cat; when t...

Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human ...

Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human ...

Sitzfleisch (which roughly means endurance⁠—“sitting flesh” or “buttock meat”) is the quality needed above all others by tournament chess players⁠—and their audiences. After Sandra had watched the gam...

Adjournment time neared. Serek, the exchange down but with considerable time on his clock, sealed his forty-sixth move against Sherevsky and handed the envelope to Vanderhoef. It would be opened when ...

Round Four saw the Machine spring the first of its surprises. It had finally forced a draw against Sherevsky in the morning session, ending the long second-round game, and now was matched against Votb...

Krakatower had lost two pawns when the first time-control point arrived and was intending to resign on his 31st move when the Machine broke down. Three of its pieces moved on the electric board at onc...

Next morning Sandra heard Dave’s guess confirmed by both Angler and Great. Doc had spotted them having coffee and a malt together and he and Sandra joined them. Doc was acting jubilant, having just dr...

The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her foots...

The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her foots...

When the First Interstellar War erupted, the pioneer fleets of Earth’s nations had barely pushed their explorations beyond the orbit of Saturn. Except for the vessels of the International Meteor Guard...

In the aft cabin, lank hairy-wristed Croker pinned another blanket around black Jackson as the latter shivered in his trance. Then Croker turned on a small light at the head of the hammock. “Captain w...

Three quarters of a day later Grunfeld felt a spasm of futile fear and revolt as the pressure suit closed like a thick-fleshed carnivorous plant on his drugged and tired body. Relax, he told himself. ...

“Come on, Gussy,” Fay prodded quietly, “quit stalking around like a neurotic bear and suggest something for my invention team to work on. I enjoy visiting you and Daisy, but I can’t stay aboveground a...

“Come on, Gussy,” Fay prodded quietly, “quit stalking around like a neurotic bear and suggest something for my invention team to work on. I enjoy visiting you and Daisy, but I can’t stay aboveground a...

Three weeks later Fay, dropping in again, handed to Daisy the larger of the two rather small packages he was carrying. “It’s a so-called beauty mask,” he told her, “complete with wig, eyelashes, and w...

It was a fortnight and Gusterson was loping down the home stretch on his 40,000-word insanity novel before Fay dropped in again, this time promptly at high noon. Normally Fay cringed his shoulders a t...

Early next morning windowless walls began to crawl up the stripped skyscraper between them and the lake. Daisy pulled the blackout curtains on that side. For a day or two longer their thoughts and con...

Next day Daisy cashed the Micro check for ten hundred silver smackers, which she hid in a broken radionic coffee urn. Gusterson sold his insanity novel and started a new one about a mad medic with a h...

Gusterson sucked in such a big gasp that he hiccuped. The right shoulder of Fay’s jacket and shirt had been cut away. Thrusting up through the neatly hemmed hole was a silvery gray hump with a one-eye...

When Gusterson got home toward the end of the second dog watch, he slipped aside from Daisy’s questions and set the children laughing with a graphic enactment of his slidestanding technique and a stor...

Davidson pushed out from the wall against which he’d been resting himself and his two-stone tickler and moved to block the hall. But Gusterson simply walked up to him. He shook his hand warmly and loo...

The raggedy little old lady with the big shopping bag was in the exact center of the crosswalk when she became aware of the big black car bearing down on her. Behind the thick bulletproof glass its se...

Once when I was doing a hitch with the Shaulan Space Guard out Scorpio way, my partner Jeff Bogart developed just about the most harmless psychosis you could imagine: he got himself an imaginary compa...

I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys’ half of the dressing room and there was Sid sitting at the star’s dressing table in his threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up y...

I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys’ half of the dressing room and there was Sid sitting at the star’s dressing table in his threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up y...

The boys’ half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussi...

My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls’ third of the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private. When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is ...

I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, “Come to my woman’s breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.” Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin wa...

Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from a pink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tiny doll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yello...

I sat down where Martin had been, first pushing the screen far enough to the side for me to see the length of the dressing room and notice anyone coming through the door and any blurs moving behind th...

There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but he can’t look at them, unless he’s a narrator or some sort of comic. I wasn’t the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of ...

The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sid and ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw, my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed o...