The Dual World, a Complete Novelet
9781465558572
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Lost Continent THE space ship loomed like a mysterious monster in the hot, swirling mists. It lay quiescent on a vast, lonely stretch of hard-packed beach. Immediately westward, barely to be seen in the eternal fog, lay the sluggish gray wastes of the Mare Gigantum, greatest of all the Venusian seas. The Solar tide was creeping in, and steaming waves charged the shore like bulls with lowered heads. Two men crawled about the gleaming hull, equipped with magnetic shoes. Both wore antiseptic helmets, as they worked slowly forward from stern to bow. The foremost carried a heat-ray gun, with the beam diffused and spread wide. Every time he came to one of the many ugly yellowish blotches that dotted the hull, he rayed it out of existence, then moved on. Tommy Strike, co-captain of one of the mightiest ships in the System, was doing out of sheer ennui work fit for the lowliest motor-oiler in the crew. “Granted,” Strike grumbled to his long-suffering companion, “I don’t know anything about handling a centrifugal flier like this. Just the same, Gerry made me co-captain, and it’s my duty to learn. But every time I slip into the pilot-house she runs me out. Says I’m like a man in a kitchen, with a positive genius for getting in the way!” “Yes, sir.” Sub-pilot Barrows carefully examined a spot cleared by the blast of Strike’s weapon, looking for evidence of pitting. If he found any, a spray of liquid metal quickly remedied the damage. “Yes, sir, I believe the periodic wind has about subsided
