Charles V. De Vet: Stories

Smart man, Bruckner--he knew how to handle natives. but they knew even better how to deal with smart terrestrials!

This planet gave him the perfect chance to commit the perfect crime--only he couldn't remember just what it was he had committed.

An intrepid interplanetary explorer named Kaiser suddenly comes to his senses after a scouting mission has gone horribly awry -- only to discover that his messages back to the mother ship have become garbled and incoherent, as if someone else was sending them. Who is this mysterious interloper?

The man I searched for could be anybody at all. If I didn't find him, there'd be nobody at all.

Under the cloud of cast-off identities lay the shape of another man-- was it himself?

Doctors had given him just one month to live. A month to wonder, what comes afterward? There was one way to find out--ask a dead man!

It is man's most precious possession--no living thing can exist without it. But when they gave it to Orville, it killed him.

Never ask "Who am I and where do I come from?" The answers may not be what you'd expect!