A pirate story that almost reads as an episode from The Star Diaries by Lem. Except, there is no parody, no wit, no interesting analogy. It’s a crude tale of greed set against a weirdly anachronistic background.

Republished in Sail 25 and Other Stories. Spatterlight, 2012.

→ The story on archive.org

Quotes:

“Perhaps,” said Magnus Ridolph, “you are too close to the problem. You must remember that this is not Planet Earth, and conditions—the psychological, the biological, and,” he turned a vastly impassive stare at Rogge, “the essentially logical circumstances—are different from what you have been accustomed to.”

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

Magnus Ridolph compressed his lips. His micromac and powerpack had disappeared. Peering under the couch Magnus Ridolph saw a patch of slightly darker fiber in the matting. He straightened his back, just in time to see his pocket screen swinging up through the air into a hole high in the wall. Magnus Ridolph started to run outside and into the adjoining room, then thought better of it. No telling how many natives would be pillaging his room if he left for an instant. He piled everything back into his suitcases, locked them, placed them in the middle of the floor, sat on the couch, lit a cigarette. Fifteen minutes he sat in reflection. A muffled bellow made him look up.

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

For several minutes information played across the screen. Very little seemed significant and he found no notes of his own on the topic. The sardinia pilchardus, according to the Mnemiphot, belonged to the herring family, swam in large shoals and fed on minute pelagic animals. There were further details of scale pattern, breeding habits, natural enemies, discussion of variant species.

Donnels kicked aside the rubbish, stood viewing the gear with evident satisfaction. Magnus Ridolph strained to catch a word of the conversation. Impossible the window was insul-glass. He trotted to the door, inched it open.

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

“Graft,” said Boek. “Graft, pure and simple. Old-fashioned Earth-style civic corruption. I should have mentioned ” another sour grin for Magnus Ridolph “ but Sclerotto City has a duly elected mayor, and a group of civic officers. There’s a fire department, a postal service, a garbage disposal unit, police force wait till you see ’em!” He chuckled, a noise like a bucket scraping on a stone floor. “That’s actually what brings the tourists the way these creatures go about making a living Earth-style.”

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

Magnus Ridolph often found himself in want for money, for his expenditures were large and he had no regular income. With neither natural diligence nor any liking for routine, he was forced to cope with each ebb of his credit balance as it occurred, a fact which suited him perfectly. In his brain an exact logical mechanism worked side by side with a projective faculty ranging the infinities of time and space, and this natural endowment he used not only to translate fact from and into mathematics, but also to maintain his financial solvency.

In the course of the years he had devised a number of money-making techniques. The first of these was profoundly simple. Surveying the world about him, he would presently observe a lack or an imperfection. A moment's thought would suggest an improvement, and in repairing the universe, Magnus Ridolph usually repaired his credit balance. (more)

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

They put down at the cottage. Magnus Ridolph alighted, walked to the edge of the field, bent over. The plants were thick, luxuriant, amply covered with clusters of purple tubes. Magnus Ridolph straightened, looked sidelong at Blantham, who had come up behind him.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Blantham mildly.

This time the cries were louder, mournful, close at hand, and Magnus Ridolph, peering through the peep-hole in the door, saw the tumble of figures come storming down the hill, black against the sky. He dipped a brush into a pan of liquid nearby, slid the door up a trifle, reached out, swabbed the resilian plate, slid the door shut. Rising, he put his eye to the peep-hole.

Reprinted in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight 2012

Quotes:

Thousands of men and women of all ages had surrounded the ship, all shouting, all agitated by strong emotion.

Betty stared, and Welstead clambered down from the controls. The words were strangely pronounced, the grammar was archaic but it was the language of Earth.

The white-haired man spoke on, without calculation, as if delivering a speech of great familiarity. “We have waited two hundred and seventy-one years for your coming, for the deliverance you will bring us.”

Deliverance? Welstead considered the word. “Don’t see much to deliver ’em from,” he muttered aside to Betty. “The sun’s shining, there’s flowers on all the trees, they look well fed a lot more enthusiastic than I do. Deliver ’em from what?” (more)

Quotes:

Paddy stared aghast. “They’d draw and quarter me! They’d wear out their nerve-suits! They’d—”

She said coolly, “We could be tourists from Earth, making the Lantry Line.”

“The situation has backfired now, Paddy. Today we’re the root-stock, and all these splits and changes brought about by the differences in light, food, atmosphere, gravity they may produce a race as much better than men as men were superior to the proto-simians.”

“Paddy!” cried Fay as if her soul were dissolving. She could not close the outer door as his leg hung out, twisted at an odd engle. Shou could not open the inner door lest she lose all the air inside the ship. (more)

Republished in the Rapparee, Spatterlight 2012.

Quotes:

“Ah,” said Magnus Ridolph, “you think I dealt with you unfairly. And you brought me to Jexjeka to work in your mines.”
“You got it right mister. I’m a hard man to deal with when I’m crowded.”

“Your unpleasant threats are supererogatory.” (more)

Republished in Magnus Ridolph, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

Two puzzles dominated the life of Jim Root. The first, the pyramid out in the desert, tickled and prodded his curiosity, while the second, the problem of getting along with his wife, kept him keyed to a high pitch of anxiety and apprehension. At the moment the problem had crowded the mystery of the pyramid into a lost alley of his brain.

“I suppose anything’s possible,” said Root. He had noticed the acquisitive twitch to Landry’s mouth, the hook of the fingers. “You’d better not get any ideas. I don’t want any trouble with the natives. Remember that, Landry.”

Landry edged slowly forward, keeping his light on the Dicantrops. He asked Root sharply, “Are these lads dangerous?”

Republshed in Golden Girl and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Republished in Sail 25 and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quote:

It must be, I tell myself, that both objectivity and subjectivity enter into the situation. I receive impressions which my brain finds unfamiliar, and so translates to the concept most closely related. By this theory the inhabitants of this world are constantly close; I move unknowingly through their palaces and arcades; they dance incessantly around me. As my mind gains sensitivity, I verge upon rapport with their way of life and I see them. More exactly, I sense something which creates an image in the visual region of my brain. Their emotions, the pattern of their life sets up a kind of vibration which sounds in my brain as music...The reality of these creatures I am sure I will never know. They are diaphane, I am flesh; they live in a world of spirit, I plod the turf with my heavy feet.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

NOLAND BANNISTER, superintendent of Star Control Field Office #12, was known at the space-port and along Folger Avenue as a hell-roarer a loud-voiced man of vigorous action. He made no secret of his dislike for administrative detail and attacked paper work with a grumbling rancor. Negligence in his staff he dealt with rudely. Mistakes of a more serious nature left him grim and white with rage.

“Here’s how I see it,” said Bannister. “If there’s money to be made looting this planet, Plum will be out and away as soon as he organizes a trip. Once in space, under sky-drive, he’s gone. We can’t trace him. Unless of course we have a representative aboard. There’s where you come in. He’s practically hired you already. You return the jewel to him, tell him you’re sorry you ran off with it, and that you want a chance to pick up a few yourself.”

Republished in Sail 25 and Other Stories, Spatterlight 2012

From Wikipedia: “The Houses of Iszm is a science fiction novella by Jack Vance, which appeared in Startling Stories magazine in 1954. It was reissued in book form in 1964 as part of an Ace Double novel, together with Vance’s Son of the Tree . The story published in Startling Stories is about 22,000 words while the version that appears in the Ace Double still less than novel length at about 30,000 words. The Houses of Iszm was re-published as a stand-alone volume in 1974 by Mayflower. ” (more on Wikipedia)

Republished by Spatterlight in 2012.