PLANET OF SAND
By Murray Leinster
Tossed into the trackless Cosmos by his
mortal enemy, shipwrecked on an unfriendly
star, he determined to defy the dangers of
numberless nights, and, hunted turned
hunter, keep a tryst with Hate....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He debated straggling farther under the shelter of the monstrous roof....
There was bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of the Stallifer. There was the hum of the air-renewal system. Once in every so often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship's machinery operated some relay somewhere. But it was very tedious to be in a confinement cell. Stan Buckley—Lieutenant, J.G., Space Guard, under charges and under restraint—found it rather more than tedious.
He should have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocent of the charges made against him by Rob Torren, formerly his immediate superior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat in his cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, a savage, a corrosive anger grew and grew and grew within him. It had been growing in just this manner for weeks.