“Oh yes, I thought of something," panted Ford.
Arthur looked up expectantly.
“But unfortunately,” continued Ford, “it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway.”
Worst. Escape. Ever!
“I’m sure no one in the Alliance expected to see me again, but I assure you that the rumors of my recent death have been exaggerated. I am accompanied by approximately one hundred and six thousand liberated inmates of the prison planet Hades, and I expect the arrival of another quarter million or so within the next eleven days—our transports have military hyper generators and we made a faster passage than they will. I regret any confusion or alarm we may have caused by turning up in Peep ships, but they were the only ones we could . . . appropriate for the voyage.”
We gutted a couple of used freighters. We can cram about 5,000 in the holds of each. The ride out is going to be fast and nasty. They’ll all have to lie down and breathe as little as possible.
Despite efforts to make the Moon colony ecologically self-sufficient, Luna City still imported vastly more tonnage than she exported. On Earth this would have resulted in “empties coming back”; in space transport it was sometimes cheaper to let empties accumulate, especially on Luna where an empty freighter was worth more as metal than it had cost originally as a ship back Earthside.
I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it’s the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at.
The moon unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.
“That’s no moon; it’s a space station.”
What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.
“Inasmuch as Mars’ outermost moon is called Deimos, and the next Phobos,” he said, “I think I shall name the third moon of
Mars…Bottomos.”
The Jeddak of Zodanga means to quash Helium this very night, and if Helium falls, so does Barsoom
“The periodic table of elements, Meg! Say it!”
A picture flashed into her mind of winter evenings spent sitting before the open fire and studying with her father. “Hydrogen. Helium,” she started obediently. Keep them in their proper atomic order.
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,…
“That isn’t just the Martian table of elements; that’s the table of elements. It’s the only one there is.” Mort Tranter almost exploded. “Look, hydrogen has one proton and one electron. If it had more of either, it wouldn’t be hydrogen, it’d be something else. And the same with all the rest of the elements. And hydrogen on Mars is the same as hydrogen on Terra, or on Alpha Centauri, or in the next galaxy—”
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Denton sat in thought for several more seconds, not particularly liking the speculations chasing around the inside of his brain like hamsters in an exercise wheel, then returned his attention to the ensign sitting before him.
“Step up to red alert."
“Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.”
A small footnote found in the court records of some parallel world. The name of Mitchell Chaplin, who served his sentence of invisibility and learned his lesson well. Too well. This time, however, he will wear his invisibility like a shield of glory. A shield forged in the very heart…of the Twilight Zone.
“Invisible Kid? But what happened?”
It’s a conjuring trick, that’s what it is. I saw a fellow make a peanut disappear once.