Diomed of Argos, son of Tydeus, drew his sword with a shout and rushed forward to finish off his Trojan opponent before help could arrive. Suddenly he stopped and threw up a shielding arm before his e...

I got the bad news as soon as we landed on Mars. The minute I got off the spacer, the little yellow Martie was standing there with a yellow envelope. He said, “Gladiator Jak Demsi?” I admitted it and ...

Maw Coy climbed the fence down at the end of the south pasture and started up the side of the creek, carrying her bundle over her shoulder and puffing slightly at her exertion. She forded the creek th...

The phone rang and Ed Kerry wasn’t doing anything so he picked it up and said, “Yeah?” He said yeah a few more times, his eyes widening infinitesimally each time, and finally wound up with, “Okay, Bun...

This section of New Sante Fe was off my beaten track. I’ve been on Mars a long time and am more than usually familiar with the various centers where we Terrans do our congregating. However, it’d been ...

To everyone in the Solar System I was a big shot, understand? Everyone but two⁠—the two that counted most. One of the two was Suzi, and the other was me. The difference was that Suzi made no bones abo...

My radar picked him up when he was about five hundred miles to my north-northeast and about forty-five miles above me. I switched the velocity calculator on him as fast as I could reach it. The enemy ...

Alexander the Great had not dreamed of India, nor even Egypt, when he embarked upon his invasion of the Persian Empire. It was not a matter of being like the farmer: “I ain’t selfish, all I want is th...

First on the scene were Larry Dermott and Tim Casey of the State Highway Patrol. They assumed they were witnessing the crash of a new type of Air Force plane and slipped and skidded desperately across...

Despite the widely publicized radar posts encircling our nation and the continuously alerted jet squadrons at its borders, the space ship was about to land before it was detected. It settled gracefull...

There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic Guards. The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at...

Before the first shots rang out, Alan had been sitting with some twenty young people of the Wolf clan in a grove of aspen approximately halfway between the fields and the citadel on the hilltop. He ha...

Betty looked up from her magazine. She said mildly, “You’re late.” “Don’t yell at me, I feel awful,” Simon told her. He sat down at his desk, passed his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fum...

They said⁠—as they have said of so many frontiersmen just like him⁠—that there must have been a woman in his past, to make him what he was. And indeed there had, but she was no flesh-and-blood female....

Two king-sized bands blared martial music, the “Internationale” and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” each seemingly trying to drown the other in a Götterdämmerung of acoustics. Two lines of troops, surface...

Paul Koslov nodded briefly once or twice as he made his way through the forest of desks. Behind him he caught snatches of tittering voices in whisper. “… That’s him⁠ ⁠… The Chief’s hatchetman⁠ ⁠… Know...

Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for ...

Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for ...

The Coordinator said, “I suppose I’m an incurable romantic. You see, I hate to see you go.” Academician Amschel Mayer was a man in early middle years; Dr. Leonid Plekhanov, his contemporary. They offs...

Specialist Joseph Chessman stood stolidly before a viewing screen. Theoretically he was on watch. Actually his eyes were unseeing, there was nothing to see. The star pattern changed so slowly as to be...

Joe Chessman was at the controls of the space lighter. At his side sat Leonid Plekhanov and behind them the other six members of their team. They had circled Texcoco twice at great altitude, four time...

The sergeant stopped the small company about a quarter of a mile from the city of Bari. His detachment numbered only ten but they were well armed with short swords and blunderbusses and wore mail and ...

Leonid Plekhanov returned to the Pedagogue with a certain ceremony. He was accompanied by Joe Chessman, Natt Roberts and Barry Watson of his original group, but four young, hard-eyed, hard-faced and a...

Leonid Plekhanov, Joseph Chessman, Barry Watson, Khan Reif and several of the Tulan army staff stood on a small knoll overlooking a valley of several square miles. A valley dominated on all sides but ...

Amschel Mayer was incensed. “What’s got into Buchwald and MacDonald?” he spat. Jerry Kennedy, attired as was his superior in fur trimmed Genoese robes, signaled one of the servants for a refilling of ...

At the decade’s end, once again the representatives of the Genoese team were first in the Pedagogue’s lounge. Mayer sat at the officer’s table, Martin Gunther at his right. Jerry Kennedy leaned agains...

Down the long palace corridor strode Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins, Natt Roberts, the aging Reif and his son Taller, now in the prime of manhood. Their faces were equally wan from long hours without slee...

At the end of the third decade, the Texcocan delegation was already seated in the Pedagogue’s lounge when Jerome Kennedy, Martin Gunther, Peter MacDonald, Fredric Buchwald and three Genoese, Baron Leo...

With the exception of a few additional delegates composed of high-ranking Texcocan and Genoese political and scientific heads, the lineup at the end of forty years was the same as ten years earlier⁠—e...

It was fifty years to a day since the Pedagogue had first gone into orbit about Rigel. Five decades have passed. Half a century. Of the original crew of the Pedagogue, six now gathered in the lounge o...

Henry Kuran answered a nod here and there, a called out greeting from a desk an aisle removed from the one along which he was progressing, finally made the far end of the room. He knocked at the door ...

Don Mathers snapped to attention, snapped a crisp salute to his superior, said, “Sublieutenant Donal Mathers reporting, sir.” The Commodore looked up at him, returned the salute, looked down at the re...

The Place de France is the town’s hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized part of the city, and the beginning of Rue de la Liberté, which leads down to the Grand S...

Joe Prantera called softly, “Al.” The pleasurable, comfortable, warm feeling began spreading over him, the way it always did. The older man stopped and squinted, but not suspiciously, even now. The ev...

Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil air-cushion convertible along the edge of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil’s Cathedral, crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and...

At least he’d got far enough to wind up with a personal interview. It’s one thing doing up an application and seeing it go onto an endless tape and be fed into the maw of a machine and then to receive...

One of the auto-copters swooped in and landed. Johnny McCord emptied his pipe into the wastebasket, came to his feet and strolled toward the open door. He automatically took up a sun helmet before eme...

One of the auto-copters swooped in and landed. Johnny McCord emptied his pipe into the wastebasket, came to his feet and strolled toward the open door. He automatically took up a sun helmet before eme...

Poste Maurice Cortier, better known in the Sahara as Bidon Cinq, is as remote a spot on earth in which man has ever lived. Some 750 kilometers to the south is Bourem on the Niger river. If you go west...

In the morning Hélène Desage managed to look the last word in what desert fashion should be, when she strolled into Johnny McCord’s office. Although she came complete with a sun helmet that must have ...

Back at Bidon Cinq again that afternoon, Johnny McCord was greeted by the native office assistant he’d left in charge while all three of the officers were gone. Mellor, at the Tissalit base, had made ...

Johnny McCord was a man who didn’t like to be thrown out of routine. He resented the interference with his schedule of the past few days. By nature he was methodical, not given to inspiration. All of ...

In his income bracket and in the suburb in which he lived, government employees in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were in. Not to wear tweeds was Non-U....

Joseph Mauser spotted the recruiting lineup from two or three blocks down the street, shortly after driving into Kingston. The local offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, undoubtedly. Baron Haer would be ...

Joseph Mauser spotted the recruiting lineup from two or three blocks down the street, shortly after driving into Kingston. The local offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, undoubtedly. Baron Haer would be ...

His permanent military rank the Haers had no way to alter, but they were short enough of competent officers that they gave him an acting rating and pay scale of major and command of a squadron of cava...

By the time Joe Mauser called it a day and retired to his quarters he was exhausted to the point where his basic dissatisfaction with the trade he followed was heavily upon him. He had met his immedia...

After routine morning duties, Joe Mauser returned to his billet and mystified Max Mainz by not only changing into mufti himself but having Max do the same. In fact, the new batman protested faintly. H...

By the time they had returned to quarters, there was a message waiting for Captain Mauser. He was to report to the officer commanding reconnaissance. Joe redressed in the Haer kilts and proceeded to h...

The following morning, hands on the pillow beneath his head, Joe Mauser stared up at the ceiling of his room and rehashed his session with Nadine Haer. It hadn’t taken him five minutes to come to the ...

In a far away past, Kingston had once been the capital of the United States. For a short time, when Washington’s men were in flight after the debacle of their defeat in New York City, the government o...

Baron Malcolm Haer’s field headquarters were in the ruins of a farmhouse in a town once known as Bearsville. His forces, and those of Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, were on the march but as yet their mai...

At the Kingston airport, Joe Mauser rejoined Max Mainz, his face drawn now. “Everything go all right?” the little man said anxiously. “I don’t know,” Joe said. “I still couldn’t tell them the story. O...

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell directed his old fashioned telescope in the direction his chief of staff indicated. “What is it?” he grunted. “It’s an airplane, sir.” “Over a military reservation with a fr...

Major Joseph Mauser, now attired in his best off-duty Category Military uniform, spoke his credentials to the receptionist. “I have no definite appointment, but I am sure the Baron will see me,” he sa...

The young man with the brown paper bag said, “Is Mrs. Coty in?” “I’m afraid she isn’t. Is there anything I can do?” “You’re Mr. Coty? I came about the soap.” He held up the paper bag. “Soap?” Mr. Coty...

Frederick Braun, M.D., Ph. D., various other D.s, pushed his slightly crooked horn-rims back on his nose and looked up at the two-story wooden house. There was a small lawn before it, moderately cared...

In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or sim...

In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or sim...

When Major Mauser, escorting Dr. Nadine Haer, daughter of the late Baron Haer of Vacuum Tube Transport, entered the swank Exclusive Room of the Greater Washington branch of the Ultra Hotels, the orche...

When Freddy Soligen entered his living room, he automatically switched off the Telly screen which was the entire north wall. The room’s lights automatically went brighter. His perpetual air of sour cy...

Joe Mauser shook hands with the Telly reporter in an abrupt, impatient manner. Freddy said, “Major, I’d like to introduce my son, Samuel. Sam, this is Major Joe Mauser. You don’t follow the fracases, ...

A servant took Joe Mauser’s cap at the door and requested that Joe follow him. Joe trailed behind on the way to the living room of the mansion, somewhat taken aback by the, to him, ostentation of the ...

It was the common practice among Category Military mercenaries of highest rank to maintain skeleton staffs between those periods when they were under hire by corporations or unions. That of Marshal St...

Freddy Soligen wasn’t at home when Joe Mauser called. The Category Military officer was met, instead, by young Sam Soligen, clothed this day in the robes of a novitiate of the Temple. Joe remembered n...

When Major Joe Mauser entered the swank Agora Bar, the little afternoon dance band broke into a few bars of that tune which was beginning to pall on him. “… I knew her heart was breaking, And to my he...

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell looked impudently around at this staff officers gathered about the chart table. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I assume you are all familiar with the battle of Chancellorsville?” No...

The airport nearest to the Grant Memorial Military Reservation was some ten miles distance from the borders which, upon the scheduling of a fracas, were closed to all aircraft, and to all persons unco...

Stretched out on the convalescent bed in the Category Military rest home, Joe grinned up at his visitor and said ruefully, “I’d salute, sir, but my arms seem to be out of commission. And, come to thin...

Freddy Soligen had been miraculously saved from the physical beating taken by Joe Mauser in the crash. The pilot, sitting so close before him, cushioned with his own body that of the Telly reporter. F...

Joe was able to get around on auto-crutches by the time she finally arrived⁠—a stereotype visitor. Done up brightly, a box of candy in one hand, flowers in the other. He could see her coming across th...

Dr. Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Mid-Upper caste, was driving and with considerable enjoyment resultant not only from her destination, long desired, now to be realized, but also from the sheer exub...

Budapest, basically, had changed little over half a millennium. The Danube, seldom blue except when seen through the eyes of a twosome between whom spark has recently been struck, still wandered its w...

Although in actuality working on a private mission for Philip Holland, Frank Hodgson and the others high in government responsibility who were planning fundamental changes in the West-world, Joseph Ma...

It was a free evening for Joe, but one that Nadine had found necessary to devote to her medical duties. Max had been gushing about a cabaret in Buda, a place named the Bécsikapu where the wine flowed ...

Joe Mauser had assumed there would be some sort of reverberations as a result of his run-in with the Sov officers, but hadn’t suspected the magnitude of them. The next morning he had hardly arrived at...

To Mauser’s surprise, the Sovs actually turned up two genuine Bowie knives. He had expected the duel, actually, to have to be conducted with trench knives or some other alternative. But the Sovs, ever...

As Max had said, as one of their alternatives to the fracas of the West-world, the Sovs put on Telly such duels as were fought amongst their supposedly honor-conscious officer caste. Evidently, the lo...

His wounds were clean, straight slashes not overly deep and which should heal readily enough. In his time, Joe Mauser had copped many a more serious one. However, after bandaging, Nadine relegated him...

In spite of Nadine Haer’s protests, Joseph Mauser insisted that they abide by the Sov government’s expulsion order on the following day. A special plane took them to London, and they there caught the ...

They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur...

They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur...

Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there had...