The Masked World by Jack Williamson - The planet hid itself from the Earthmen—and what lay behind the mask was fierce and deadly!
The planet wore a mask.
At ten million miles, it was a sullen yellow eye. At one million, a scarred and evil leer. Outside the smoking circle our landing-jets had sterilized, it was a hideous veil of hairy black tentacles and huge sallow blooms, hiding the riddle of its sinister genes.
On most worlds that we astronauts have found, the life is vaguely like our own. Similar nucleotides are linked along similar helical chains of DNA, carrying similar genetic messages. A similar process replicates the chains when the cells divide, to carry the complex blue-prints for a particular root or eye or wing accurately down across ten thousand generations.
But even the genes were different here—enormously complicated. Here the simplest-seeming weed had more and longer chains of DNA than anything we had seen before. What was their message?
We had come to read it, with our new genetic micro-probe. A hundred precious tons of microscopic electronic gear, it was designed to observe and manipulate the smallest units of life. It could reach even those strange genes.
That was our mission.
Ours was the seventh survey ship to approach the planet. Six before us had been lost without trace. We were to find out why.
Our pilot was Lance Llandark. A lean hard man, silent and cold as the gray-cased micro-probe. We hated him—until someone learned why he had volunteered to come.
His wife had been pilot of the ship before us. When we knew that, we began to hear the hidden tension in his tired voice, monotonously calling on every band: 'Come in, Six.... Come in Six....'
Six never came in.
Space Travelers and Nothing But Space Travelers 5 - 13 Lost Sci-Fi Short Stories from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s
- Beside Still Waters by Robert Sheckley
- Home is the Spaceman by George O. Smith
- Welcome Martians by Evan Hunter
- Souvenir by Philip K. Dick
- Unfortunately by Fredric Brown
- The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
- The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson
- Chicken Farm by Ross Rocklynne
- Before Eden by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Call From Beyond by Clifford D. Simak
- The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak
- The Moon That Vanished by Leigh Brackett
- The Shipshape Miracle by Clifford D. Simak
The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson
Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding tumbled out of the rumpled bed-clothing, a striking slender figure in purple striped pajamas. He smiled fondly across to the other of the twin beds, where Nada, his pretty bride, lay quiet beneath light silk covers. With a groan, he stood up and began a series of fantastic bending exercises. But after a few half-hearted movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open door into a small bright room, its walls covered with bookcases and also with scientific appliances that would have been strange to the man of four or five centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning.
Who is the Child of Night? That's what small-town reporter Will Barbee must find out. Inexorably drawn into investigating a rash of grisly deaths, he soon finds himself embroiled in something far beyond mortal understanding.
Doggedly pursuing his investigations, he meets the mysterious and seductive April Bell and starts having disturbing, tantalizing dreams in which he does terrible things-things that are stranger and wilder than his worst nightmares. Then his friends begin dying one by one, and he slowly realizes that an unspeakable evil has been unleashed.
As Barbee's world crumbles around him in a dizzying blizzard of madness, the intoxicating, dangerous April pushes Barbee ever closer to the answer to the question "Who is the Child of Night?"
When Barbee finds out, he'll wish he'd never been born.
"Darker Than You Think yields sheer enjoyment, generating wonder and suspense as Williamson springs his sequence of trap doors with the effortless agility of a master."-Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author
Jack Williamson, the dean of science fiction writers, weaves an exciting tale that takes four friends to the far corners of the universe. One leads an oppressed people to freedom. Another uncovers clues that could identify a long-dormant civilization of immortal beings. Now each traveler must play a crucial role in unraveling an ancient mystery, the solution to which may reveal the true origins of the human race.
On the far planet Wing IV, a brilliant scientist creates the humanoids, sleek black androids programmed to serve humanity. But are they perfect servants or perfect masters? Gradually the humanoids spread throughout the galaxy, threatening to stifle all human endeavor. Only a hidden group of rebels can stem the humanoid tide, if it's not already too late.
First published in Astounding Science Fiction during the magazine's heyday, The Humanoids, science fiction grand master Jack Williamson's finest novel, has endured for fifty years as a classic on the theme of natural versus artificial life. With Folded Hands continues the story.
