They had been captured, but by whom? And why where they allowed to build anything they wanted to escape? The space cruiser was powerful and built to fight anything in the galaxy, but somehow, in the empty rift between galaxies, they had been rendered helpless and brought to this prison. Even stranger was that their captors had not harmed any of them at all, used no weapons and allowed them to use all equipment brought from their ship inside the prison. And did not utter a sound. Stranger and stranger. Where were they, and how could they escape? And where could they go if they did? Follow these space men as they match wits with an utterly unknown life form ... and win. This story was first published in Astounding Science-Fiction September 1943
An anthology of exceptional Science Fiction short stories. Volume 2
Intelligent life on the Sun;
They live amongst us undetected;
The gods were not what had been taught.
CONTENTS:
* Proof - by: Hal Clement - 1946
* Mimic - by: Donald A. Wollheim - 1942
* Pilgrimage - by: Nelson Bond - 1939
Although known as one of the most scrupulously accurate of the "hard science" writers, someone careful to always get the scientific details right, Hal Clement also has a rich and lively imagination, especially when it comes to alien lifeforms, and he has created some of the most memorable alien characters in science fiction. Clement's outdone even himself in the suspenseful novella, Exchange Rate, in which harried human explorers (under pressure in more ways than one!) must try to figure out the lifeways and motivations of some extremely strange and enigmatic alien creatures on one of the strangest planets ever portrayed in science fiction - and do it all before the clock runs out. Exchange Rate was chosen for inclusion in the Seventeenth Annual Collection of The Year's Best Science Fiction.
Hal Clement is the writing name of longtime science teacher Harry Clement Stubbs - made his first sale in 1942 to Astounding, and became one of the mainstays of that magazine throughout the 50's and 60's, with much of his best short work appearing there. Clement's most famous novel is Mission of Gravity, which in retrospect still holds up as one of the best SF books of the 50's. His other books include the novels Star Light, Needle, Close to Critical, Iceworld, Ocean on Top, and The Nitrogen Fix. In 1999, Clement was given the prestigious Grandmaster Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
