Robert Emmett McDowell

“ Joel tried to draw Tamis out about the Ganelons, but she had been too badly frightened by Liedl's death.
She was afraid of him, too; he could see it in her eyes and it worried him. One sleeping period he asked her about it with characteristic bluntness.
Tamis bit her lip. "I—I never saw a man killed before. I can't get it out of my mind. It's not you, Joel." And then she began to tell him about her early life in the Ganelon village.
It was a life without sham—a simple joyous pagan existence close to the primal forces of nature. Tamis' voice trembled with nostalgia. ”

“ The ether was as silent as it must have been before the discovery of radio.
"Hell!" said Matt. "There's nothing to be seen out there." He took his nose away from the port beyond which the wet clouds were roiling in sheets of red, tinted by the flaming jets. "I'm going to wait in the messroom."
He stamped off. He had grown thinner and his face was lined. His blue eyes were haggard. The Argus lurched and dropped a dozen feet, hurling him to his knees.
Matt cursed viciously and caught his balance to stagger into the messroom. Isaac Trigg, the director, was there, and Pendergrast. ”

“ The web-birds had dropped onto the pair in the open. Jupiter could see neither Reiloc nor Tabak. Only the monstrous fluttering of the creature's wings. Then the flock lifted slowly into the air bearing the Nehogan and the Caligan girl aloft. Jupiter didn't dare fire for fear of hitting either the one or the other.
They rose higher, higher, then straight as wild bees they lined out for the distant city by the Dra Dur.
Jupiter was beside himself with helpless rage and consternation. He couldn't chase them in the starship. It would be like attempting to follow a school of fish in an ocean liner. ”

“ Zara was a diminutive green little world, held in thrall by the third planet of Alpha Centauri A. A miniature heaven of soft breezes and crystal streams and gravity so slight that Saxon felt buoyant as a bubble.
He said in rare good humor, "So there it is. The Varkans can't slow the metabolic rate of billions of humanoids by force or by themselves in time."
He was surrounded by the members of the expedition, to whom he had just explained the proposal of the Aliens to extend mankind's normal life span to an unthinkable age. ”

“ The cabin flooded with brilliance.
The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck!
Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the Nova's space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart.
Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs. ”

“ Why should anyone go to all that trouble to disguise himself exactly like Vickers—even to the ill-fitting gray suit? There was something sinister about the whole affair.
Just then Vickers tripped, lost his precarious balance and fell sprawling.
He scrambled to his feet in time to see the stranger leap into an air taxi.
"Look at his eyes!" a woman cried out at his elbow. "Look at his eyes!"
Vickers hastily lowered his inner lids, cursing under his breath. There wasn't another cab in sight. He'd better clear out before he was the focal point of a riot. Normal humans weren't fond of mutants. ”

“ Joel introduced himself. Thorp, he saw, was short and husky with prematurely gray hair and blue eyes bright as bits of china.
"You've made yourself a wicked enemy," Thorp observed, prodding the giant with his toe. "That's Walt Eriss."
"Walt Eriss!" Joel's green eyes widened. Walt Eriss' trial had created the sensation of the decade.
Walt Eriss had been a brilliant surgeon, but with a pathological twist. A modern Jack the Ripper who delighted in torturing his patients. He had killed forty-three women by his own confession before he was apprehended! ”

“ Jupiter sucked in his breath. A procession of humans was filing out of the darkness.
A scrawny, naked Caligan was in the lead, making cabalistic signs with a phallic instrument resembling the Egyptian sistrum as he moved in front of the idol.
Behind him came the others, two by two—wild Kagans fresh from the jungle, a man with four arms, several with prehensile tails, some with fur and some hairless. They walked with the same dreamy preoccupied air of the humans that Jupiter had seen in the courtyard, and prostrated themselves before the glowing idol. ”

“ The tang of ozone, engendered by the blue electric-arc furnace was faint in Matt's nostrils, and the peculiar smell of burning iron. He thought grimly of the morrow when the besieging Amazons would have to be liquidated.
They could convoy the trucks through the Amazon's lines with a couple of the tanks that were stored in the basement. But he dismissed the plan as soon as it presented itself. That way, they would have to divide their strength, using precious manpower to guard the workers when they needed everyone to convert the fortress into a sealed bastion against the alien life form. ”

“ Come along now."
"Murderer," said the man with disconcerting calmness. "I'm innocent—and you're killing me just as surely as if you shot me with that dart-gun. Do you think Amalgamated Plastic has forgotten? I'm proscribed. Their agents will get me. Why don't you shoot me outright?" His voice ran up the scale, half-hysterical with fright as he read his sentence in Gavin's cold, unblinking eyes. "You're not human. Go ahead. Kill me now. I'm not coming. Do you hear? I'm not coming."
Gavin saw himself reach suddenly across the desk and rap the fugitive on the skull with the butt of his dart-gun. ”

“ Clyde Vickers shuffled awkwardly down the gangplank. After two years on Jupiter he felt buoyant as a toy balloon in the mild gravity of Earth's satellite. Every step he expected to go sailing over the heads of the other passengers—up, up into the vast booming reaches of Luna City's airlock.
The line jammed, came to a fuming stop. Vickers found himself wedged between a woman who had boarded the liner at Mars and a bearded Plutonian explorer. ”