VENUSIAN INVADER
By LARRY STERNIG
Leah Barrow would die. Tar Norn had sworn she
would, unless he was set free. But freedom for
the Venusian Pirate meant death for many, and
it was Director Barrow's duty to hold him—even
though it would cost his daughter's life.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mart Wells shut off the alarm buzzer and jumped out of bed—much to his regret. He cussed and then grinned sheepishly as he brought up with a thud against the fortunately unbreakable glass of the window. A year on Callisto, and he could still forget that he weighed only thirty-six pounds and couldn't take a normal step without neutronium-weighted shoes.
Regaining his balance, he yawned and looked out over the rough Callisto landscape beyond Comprotown. Then he yawned again and reached for his uniform.
A year before, Comprotown—and his job as rocketport dispatcher—had been Romance with a capital R. Now, he thought gloomily, Romance with Leah with a capital L, and a fat lot of good that did him when Leah Barrow's father was Old Fish-face himself, Director of Comprotown.
True, Comprotown held fewer than a thousand colonists, but it was the only inhabited spot on bleak Callisto, and its Director was practical czar of a world. Yes, the Director could well afford to look down his long nose at any uniform with fewer than six stars on its right sleeve. But Leah didn't feel that—
Suddenly, straightening up as he fastened his weighted boot, he looked more intently out of the window. Something that flashed caught his eye out in the barren, warped hills. A gleam of metal where metal shouldn't have been. And it looked like a small spaceship.