The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  A LENGTH OF ROPE

  THE SPHERE OF SLEEP

  ENIGMA OF THE CITY

  SKY IMP

  IF YOU BELIEVE

  FIDO

  ENVIRONMENT

  WEEP NO MORE, MY ROBOT

  DISAPPEARANCE

  JEWEL OF DEATH

  MIRAGE WORLD

  FOUR WHO RETURNED

  A CRYSTAL AND A SPELL

  GETAWAY

  HAPPINESS IS NOWHERE

  HAUNTED METROPOLIS

  QUEST OF THE SPLIT MAP

  DEATH SENTENCE

  WATER LODE

  THE FINAL HOUR

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The 39th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: Chester S. Geier is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

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

  * * * *

  “A Length of Rope” was originally appeared in Unknown, April 1941.

  “The Sphere of Sleep” was originally published in Amazing Stories, December 1942.

  “Enigma Of The City” was originally published in Amazing Stories, April 1943.

  “Sky Imp” was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1943.

  “If You Believe” was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1943.

  “Fido” was originally published in Unknown Worlds, October 1943.

  “Environment” was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1944.

  “Weep No More, My Robot” was originally published in Amazing Stories, June 1945.

  “Disappearance” was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1945.

  “Jewel Of Death” was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, December 1945.

  “Mirage World” was originally published in Amazing Stories, December 1945.

  “Four Who Returned” was originally published in Amazing Stories, February 1946.

  “A Crystal And A Spell” was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, May 1946.

  “Getaway” was originally published in Amazing Stories, October 1946.

  “Happiness Is Nowhere” was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1946.

  “Haunted Metropolis” was originally published in Amazing Stories, November 1946.

  “Quest Of The Split Map” was originally published in Mammoth Adventure, November 1946.

  “Death Sentence” was originally published in Amazing Stories, December 1946.

  “Water Lode” was originally published in Mammoth Western, December 1946.

  “The Final Hour” was originally published in Weird Tales, January 1947.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Chester S. Geier (1921-1990) was a U.S. author and editor whose first work, “A Length of Rope” (included here) appeared in Unknown in April 1941. Editor Ray Palmer recruited him to write for the Ziff-Davis group of pulp magazines, where he became a frequent contributor to Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, and less frequently to mystery and western pulps. He published under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Guy Archette, Alexander Blade, P F Costello, Warren Kastel, S M Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance and Peter Worth.

  This volume collects 21 of his science fiction and fantasy stories 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.

  A LENGTH OF ROPE

  Originally appeared in Unknown, April 1941.

  He was small and wizened, and dressed in sooty black. Near him lay a derby hat which was hardly large enough to cover the stumps of the horns of his head. The emerald glow in his slit-pupiled eyes was dulled as he sat there deep in thought. He was staring at seven objects which hung from rusty nails in the stone wall.

  The place he sat in could not be called a room, for it was much too large. Leaping flames from some source behind him threw grotesque patterns of fiery orange on the stone walls. Yet the place was not warm. It was moist and chill—shadow-haunted.

  Occasional spurts of the flames threw the seven objects on the wall into distinct relief. There was a golden goblet, a bronze dagger, a large, pink jewel, a silver chain, a ring of exotic design, a length of rope, and an ebony cane. After a long while of deep meditation, he took the length of rope down from its nail, and studied it. In appearance it resembled an ordinary rope—but it was not an ordinary rope. A strand of something brightly red ran through its center.

  As on each of the other objects, there was a tag fastened to the rope. He read the words printed on the tag.

  DEATH BY STRANGULATION

  George Hornisby

  withdrawn July 24, 1735

  replaced Sept. 28, 1735

  Gertrude Larrimore

  withdrawn Feb. 6, 1809

  replaced April 11, 1809

  Nathan Ordwinn

  withdrawn Dec. 14, 1871

  replaced Feb. 16, 1872

  James Gatlin

  withdrawn May 2, 1919

  replaced July 7, 1919

  He decided to take the length of rope. It had not been in use as much as it should have, and, if he had judged potentialities correctly, it would make the most appropriate gift to the mortal who had saved his “life.” He knew that the rope would be the death of that mortal and of some of the others who were a part of that mortal’s environment. But he was not being intentionally cruel. Death was his business—and he could not forget his business even where gifts were concerned.

  He rose, stuffing the length of rope into a pocket of his black suit. Then he placed the derby hat on his head. He pulled it down carefully, so that it would stay firm. The bright leaping of the flame dwindled to a dim flicker as he left.

  * * * *

  The wooden beam was not very heavy. But
, then, Dennis Afford had never been a strong man. He was small and frail, and his narrow face was lined with a bitterness that refused to stay hidden. The muscles on his thin arms stood out like wire cords as he strained to hold the beam in position. His lips, were pressed tightly together with the effort.

  “Elaine!” he shouted. “Elaine! Hurry up, won’t you?”

  Alford’s breath came in ragged gasps, and the pain in his arms was becoming unbearable. His thoughts were tinged with anger and regret. He realized now that he should never have attempted to save the money it would have cost to pay a carpenter by repairing the porch himself. At best, he was making a mess of the whole thing.

  His, wife’s frightened, round face appeared below the banister upon which he stood. “I can’t find a piece of wood that big!” she wailed.

  Alford blew out his breath in exasperation. “Well, then saw one that big!” he roared. “I can’t hold this thing up much longer.” He muttered blackly as he shifted his body to a more comfortable position against the wall.

  “Can I help you?” asked a voice near his knees.

  Startled, Alford looked down, nearly losing his balance. The man who stood there was small and wizened, and dressed in sooty black. His derby hat seemed too large for his pinched face.

  “You sure can—and thanks, a lot,” replied Alford. “I have to have a piece of wood to nail up against the wall here so I can rest this beam on it. Can you climb up and hold it?”

  “That,” smiled the stranger, “will not be necessary.” From a pocket of his coat he pulled a length of rope.

  Alford watched in bewilderment as the stranger grasped the vertical beam, and, with an agility which his appearance denied, hopped lightly to the banister. He tied the rope deftly about the crossbeam and the vertical beam upon which it rested. All was done in a moment. Alford felt the weight of the beam taken immediately from his arms.

  He gasped as full understanding of what had been done, struck into him. One end of the heavy crossbeam was now fastened to the vertical beam by means of the rope. But the other end—the end which he had been holding—was entirely free! And the crossbeam remained horizontal, apparently defying all the laws of gravity!

  “How in the world—” muttered Alford. Of a sudden he stiffened and stood gaping at the stranger, who had now hopped back down to the porch. “Say! Aren’t you the fellow I pulled away from that truck?”

  The stranger nodded brightly. “I am,” he admitted. “Coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say it is!” rejoined Alford. He was swiftly becoming aware that there was something queer about the stranger. The stranger’s eyes were a vivid green, and—the pupils were slit-like and not round at all. The stranger’s nose was a curving blade of flesh from his sallow face. His chin was almost a point.

  Alford realized that he was staring. He blinked his eyes away, feeling acutely uncomfortable.

  The stranger was smiling in a twisted, sardonic way. “You saved my life that day,” he said. “I have not forgotten.”

  “It was, nothing,” disclaimed Alford. “I just happened to be behind you and saw the truck coming before you did, that’s all.”

  “I meant to reward you then,” said the stranger. “But you had disappeared in the crowd. For saving my life you may keep the rope. It has…ah…useful properties. Good day!”

  And, before Alford could even think of saying anything, the stranger had briskly descended the steps of the porch and was walking rapidly down the street.

  A curious conviction came to Alford. He stared after the stranger, and it seemed to him that the dwindling footsteps were a rhythmic tap, tap, tap. Like hoofs, he thought, recalling those weird green eyes. He shivered, from a sudden chill in his back.

  Alford was scowling absently, at the beam; now supported miraculously by the rope, when his wife came hurrying from the yard.

  “Here it is,” she said breathlessly, extending the piece of wood she had just sawn. She stopped short, and her plump body went rigid as she noticed that Alford was no longer holding up the beam. “Why, how did you get it fastened?” she asked in surprise. She wanted to be angry, but did not quite dare.

  Alford explained shortly, still gazing at the rope. “And don’t look at me like that!” he finished. “Go on in the house and get dinner ready. This’ll be all for today. I’ll do the rest tomorrow.” He snatched the piece of wood from her limp hand and very thoughtfully nailed it into position just under the loose end of the crossbeam.

  After that was done he drove several nails through the crossbeam and into the vertical beam so that the two were joined securely. He then tried to loosen the rope which was bound around them, but it refused to come loose. He pried vigorously with the hammer. Yet the rope never so much as budged.

  Angry and a little frightened, Alford pulled out his pocket knife. He began to saw at the strand’s of the rope. Minutes passed, and he was sweating, but the sharp blade did not even leave a dent in the rope.

  He tried to swear away the empty feeling in his stomach and did not quite succeed. There was a new fear and a great awe in his eyes as he stared at the rope. And then he noticed something which had hitherto escaped him—through the center of the rope ran a bright thread.

  It appeared to be of metal, for it was red and glittering. Yet it was like no metal he had ever seen before. And he was a chemist. He touched it gingerly with the blade of his knife. At the contact a little shock darted up into his arm.

  Frightened, he jerked back, and, losing his balance, had to jump to the porch. His face was white. A thousand wondering thoughts flitted through his head. He stood there until his wife called him in to dinner.

  Her eyes were large and wide upon him while he ate. Their disturbing intensity, added to his unease, made him furious.

  “Damn you!” he snarled. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know any more about the thing than you do!”

  Dennis Alford spent a restless, thought-pestered night, and when he appeared the next morning at the little chemical concern where he worked there were smudges of black under his eyes. Foreman Ansel Houk was devilishly pleased.

  “Late again, huh?” he snapped. “What’s the idea? Getting too lazy to even come to work?”

  “I’ve told you before,” replied Alford patiently, “the bus I take has to go slow because the road is being repaired along a four-mile stretch.”

  “Then why don’t you get up earlier?” roared Houk.

  A red mist surged before Alford’s vision, and he wanted fiercely to hurl himself at Houk’s throat. It was not the first time he had wanted to do that. He hated the foreman with an intensity all the more deadly because Houk was holding down the job he would have given his eyeteeth to have. Alford would have given anything to be foreman. It was the only ambition he had.

  But he forced himself to keep his anger and resentment tightly in check. For, releasing it, he knew, would mean not only the loss of his job, but a sound beating at Houk’s hands as well. Alford knew that he was no match for the brawny foreman. He had a gun at home, and the only reason he never used it was because he had doubts about the perfect crime.

  Trying to still the trembling of his body, Alford said, “The buses arrive only at one-hour intervals. I have to get up early enough to catch, the one I usually take.”

  Houk made an abrupt gesture. “None of your damned excuses! Get to work! The next time you’re late, it’s the chutes for you.”

  Seething with his enforced impotency, Alford stalked to the lockers. He felt tense and ill inside. As he shrugged quickly out of his coat, he noticed that there was an unaccustomed bulge in one pocket. But he was in too much of a hurry to investigate.

  The day’s work was dull and monotonous, as it usually was. Alford was so preoccupied with what had taken place on the previous day that he made several mistakes in his routine analytical tests. Houk was prompt with his tongue-lashings.<
br />
  But that day was not like the days which had preceded it. For, at its close, Ansel Houk was found in his office—dead. He was a very disturbing sight to look at. There were purple welts around his neck. His eyes were bulging from their sockets, and his tongue hung down almost to the end of his chin.

  The medical examiner who came with the police pronounced his death as due to strangulation—slow strangulation front some sort of rope. The instrument of death itself could hot be found.

  Every article of furniture in the office was dusted with fingerprint powder; samples of dust and lint were taken, and the body of Ansel Houk was photographed front several different angles. But that was as far as the police got. They took their disgust out on the men.

  “Where was ya when the murder was committed?” one of the plain-clothes men thundered at Alford. It was Alford’s turn.

  “I was at my bench,” replied Alford. He felt neither fear nor animosity toward his inquisitor. For Houk was dead, and he had had nothing to do with it. He was quite happy.

  “Yeah?” snorted the detective suspiciously. He treated everyone suspiciously. Even his wife had doubts about her innocence when he was around. His name inappropriately enough, was Burdy, and his nose had been pushed snugly against his face at some time in the past. “Where is your bench?”

  Alford pointed. “Over there. No. 9.”

  “Couldn’t sneak from there inta the stiff’s office, could ya?”

  “I don’t think so. I’d have to pass Novack’s bench. He’d see me.”

  “Ya hated his guts, didn’t ya?”

  “Nobody here liked him.”

  “All right!” barked the detective in desperation. “Why did ya do it?”

  “I didn’t,” retorted Alford simply.

  Burdy threw up his hands in resignation. “That’s all! Next! You, there, with the whiskers.”

  Alford and. the other men were held hours after the time they were supposed to have gone home. As a result, Alford had to wait for a long time before a bus came. To while away the minutes, he reached into a pocket of his coat for his package of cigarettes. It was then that he again became aware of the strange object stuffed in the pocket. He pulled it out.