Stephen Marlowe

Name: A Place in the Sun
Author: Stephen Marlowe

A Place in the Sun

Summary

“A Place in the Sun”, is a work by Stephen Marlowe. It explores elements such as Galaxy, subspace and Ackerman Boone.

Quotes from A Place in the Sun (Stephen Marlowe)

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Only the Glory of the Galaxy’s officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion passage.
Something—unidentified as yet—in all the thousands of intricate things that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously—and not because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life always is at stake. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ We’re all going to die, Larry. I don’t want—Larry, what are you going to do?”
They had been walking in a deserted companionway which brought them to one of the aft escape hatches of the Glory of the Galaxy. Their clothing was plastered to their bodies with sweat and every breath was agonizing, furnace hot.
“I’m going outside,” Larry said quietly.
“Outside? What do you mean?”
“Spacesuit, outside. There’s a hatch in the subspace room. If their attention is diverted to the companionway door, I may be able to get in. It’s our only chance—ours, and everyone’s.” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Ackerman Boone cried. “Now, do we take over the ship and man those lifeboats or don’t we!”
The roar which followed his words was a decidedly affirmative one.
“These are the figures,” Admiral Stapleton said. “You can see, Mr. President, that we have absolutely no chance whatever if we man the lifeboats. We would perish as assuredly as we would if we remained with the Glory of the Galaxy in normal space.”
“Admiral, I have to hand it to you. I don’t know how you can think—in all this heat.”
“Have to, sir. Otherwise we all die.” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League—now, Galactic Federation—post, must have a body in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required. No one knew when Mayhem’s services might be required. No one knew exactly under what circumstances the Galactic Federation Council, operating from the Hub of the Galaxy, might summon Mayhem. And only a very few people, including those at the Hub and the Galactic League Firstmen on civilized worlds and Observers on frontier planets, knew the precise mechanics of Mayhem’s coming. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ That’s a hell of a way to risk the life of the most important man in the Galaxy. Because if Mayhem boards that ship and can’t do anything about it, he’ll die with the rest of them.”
“Why? We could always pluck his elan out again.”
“If he were inhabiting a dead one. In a live body, I don’t think so. The attraction would be stronger. There would be forces of cohesion—”
“That’s true. Still, Mayhem’s our only hope.”
“I’ll admit it’s a job for Mayhem, but he’s too important.”
“Is he? Don’t be a fool. What, actually, is Johnny Mayhem’s importance? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Mayhem, doomed now to possible immortality as a bodiless sentience, an elan, which could occupy and activate a corpse if it had been preserved properly ... an elan doomed to wander eternally because it could not remain in one body for more than a month without body and elan perishing. Mayhem, who had dedicated his strange, lonely life to the services of the Galactic League—now the Galactic Federation—because a normal life and normal social relations were not possible to him.... ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Ackerman Boone shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” he said mockingly. “I’m only an enlisted man and they don’t give enlisted men enough math to answer questions like that. But reckoning by the seat of my pants I would say, yes. Yes, we could get away like that—if we act fast. Because every minute we waste is a minute that brings us closer to the sun and makes it harder to get away in the lifeboats. If we act, men, we got to act fast.” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ It was obvious that the temperature within the Glory of the Galaxy had now climbed fifteen or twenty degrees despite the fact that the refrigs were working at full capacity. Even the bulkheads and the metal floor of crew quarters were unpleasantly warm to the touch. The air was hot and suddenly very dry.
“I’ll tell you what we ought to do,” Ackerman Boone said finally. “Admiral Stapleton or no Admiral Stapleton, President of the Galactic Federation or no President of the Galactic Federation, we ought to take over this ship and man the life boats for everyone’s good. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Ackerman Boone admitted. “All right, so none of us knows how to work the subspace mechanism. You think that would have helped? It would have killed us all, I tell you.”
“It was a chance, Boone. Our last chance and you—”
“Just shut up!” Boone snarled. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we ought to let them officers and Secret Servicemen to ram home the subspace drive. But use your head, man. Probably they’ll kill us all, but if they don’t—”
“Then you admit there’s a chance!” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ The deal also is, every inhabited world has a body waiting for his elan in cold storage. But don’t you think if we could talk to Mayhem now—”
“It isn’t possible. He’s in transit.”
“Don’t you think if we could talk to him now he would agree to board the Glory of the Galaxy?”
“How should I know? I’m not Johnny Mayhem.”
“If he doesn’t board her, it’s certain death for all of them.”
“And if he does board her, what the hell can he do about it? Besides, there isn’t any dead body awaiting his elan on that ship or any ship. He wouldn’t make a very efficacious ghost.”
“But there are live people. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Ackerman Boone spat on the polished, gleaming floor of the crew quarters. “He’ll never get us out alive, let me tell you. He wants to shift us into subspace at the last possible minute. Suddenly. Like this—” and Ackerman Boone snapped his fingers. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ He walked to a mirror on the wall and approved of the strong young body which would house his sentience and then scowled. A thought inside his head said:
So this is what it’s like to have schizophrenia.
What the hell was that? Mayhem thought.
I said, so this is what it’s like to have schizophrenia. First the world’s worst headache and then I start thinking like two different people.
Aren’t you dead?
Is that supposed to be a joke, alter ego? When do the men in the white suits come? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ There are too many imponderables: you are, to a certain degree, expendable. The commissioned contingent aboard the Glory of the Galaxy was a dedicated group, hand-picked from all the officers in the solar system. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ He’s expecting to wake up in a cold-storage corpse on Deneb IV but instead he’ll come to in a living body aboard a spaceship on collision course for the sun.”
“Just hope he—”
“I know. Succeeds. I don’t even want to think of the possibility he might fail.”
In seconds, the gleaming white dot crawled across the surface of the tri-dim chart from sector C-17 to sector S-1.
The Glory of the Galaxy was now nineteen million miles out from the sun and rushing through space at a hundred miles per second, normal space drive. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Stephen Marlowe, A Place in the Sun

“ Their sole job was to maintain liaison with a man whose very existence was doubted by most of the human inhabitants of the Galaxy but whose importance could not be measured by mere human standards in those early days when the Galactic League was becoming the Galactic Federation. ”

Stephen Marlowe

Summary

Quotes from A Place in the Sun (Stephen Marlowe)

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