One of three

The bit of whitish substance fluoresced, which of course was quite natural. It also vibrated very faintly, which was unnatural. At least, this property had not been known previo...

"I did. He did not appear. After I returned I watched at regular intervals. No one came. Also I listened carefully as you suggested. He hasn't been calling--hasn't called since...

"Yes," nodded Maddox. His nod was toward a rather attractive girl, who was riding herd on a large wire recorder. From time to time she would reach out and adjust the volume of t...

Ed Bronson thought it out on his way to the police station. Man was an impossible mixture of altruism and selfishness. Man was inclined to give freely to those who were needy--b...

"Correct. Properly to save us trouble the invasion must take place against small armed odds. Otherwise, instead of our finding a world decimated and wearied by war, we'll find a...

John Cauldron made contact with Peter Moray shortly after Virginia had gone. Moray, busy with the details at hand, had not given much time to thinking out the course of the futu...

The automatic computer in the laboratory of atomic physics at the New Mexico University on Earth Three was a vast thing that encompassed many acres of wiring, tubes and memory-s...

Unmindful of his danger--both immediate and future--Ed Bronson sat and watched Virginia with admiration. Their initial talk had been sketchy. All Virginia knew was that she had...

In the sky, high, high up--a stubby-winged drone circled above Albuquerque thrice. Then it streaked away from the city and headed toward Alamogordo. The pillar of fire was vicio...

Bronson found that the streets of the city were teeming with people which was not what he had expected from his brief talk with Miss Carlson of Earth Two. Bronson was absolutely...

In a small but comfortable room in Maddox's laboratory Bronson found time to object to Kingston's statement that anyone adhering to a principle is automatically a fanatic. A fan...

Virginia followed Bronson down to the laboratory in a daze, and she comprehended only about one half of what he was saying. The one thing that she did not understand was why he...

"It isn't only their technical perfection that is wrong. That is fine, and something that Earth One will achieve in the due course of time. There's something else--something bas...

Now it was silent in the computation laboratory, save for the occasional clicking of the super calculator that lined one wall of the room. Pages and pages of equations were pile...

"Then we proceed to grab Leader Kingston and apply bamboo splinters under the fingernails or place a rat on his bare tummy, placing a bowl on top of the rat, and then building a...

She smiled and took a deep breath. Bronson looked at her quizzically. It was obvious that something had happened that had pleased her--or convinced her of something, but what it...