The Voice Of Scariliop By H. V. B.

Four pillars, arising out of the stone like strange growing things of demoniac shape--these Redforth saw and comprehended, knowing full well that Tarath had always abounded in monstrosities. “But what,” he asked himself, “will knowing of such as this, be of use to me, as I search for Ghiltharmie?” For he had at last come to realise, to admit even to himself, that he was a lost thing. The Yulphog had taken his soul. They had exiled him to this lost land of dread. But they’d hinted of escape, if he could find it. “Si Yamlon,” he had told him, pointing to a writhing belt of suns, lifting and lowering at the horizon like the yellow crest of a flaming wave. And he had nodded his head. They had vanished, disintegrating, it seemed. He didn’t then know that they were related to Topper’s friends and the jeep in one thing: that their Typonisif and Tregoifer was applicable to the atmosphere.

The four pillars were bending from their own weight. Strange colors--like an idiot’s conception of a spectrum, spectrally rippled like irid waves across the columns. Like music in color. Assailed by their complex harmonies, Redforth could only stand speechless, hands thrust defensively forward. IT WAS THEN THAT HE SAW EIRY.

The pillars split. From each of then drifted a whiff of steam. They united into a wavering cloud which shimmered an instant in mid-air, then settled to the ground. And as it touched the metallic grass blades which stretched on and on like the upraised swords of a midget army, the vapor-cloud condensed into a woman’s body. EIRY. Queen of Scariliop!

He recognized her at once, tho he had only read of her. She was not human. Her body was like a snake’s, and she had bat wings. From a cluster of writhing worm-tentacles leered her face, like a mask in the heart of a seething flower. It was oval, and the scarlet mouth was like a velvet cushion--disproportionate--waiting for some priceless burden. Her nose was negligible, but her lone eye was vast and blue; like a doorway opening upon a sky too blue to belong to our world. Like blue incarnate: and blue is the color of MYSTERY.

She opened her mouth, and her tongue unrolled, uncoiled toward Redforth. Three feet long, the tongue was filamental, like a strand of red cobweb, tipped by a touch of fluff like a dandelion’s seed. This member wandered lightly over Redforth’s cheek, and for the first time EIRY spoke: “It comes to me that here is the man for whom we have been seeking, Yasgorphitove.” Her voice was soft as clouds. Redforth in vain peered to behold her companion. “Now shall we enlighten him as to the ways of escape? In return for a favor, of course.”

The air about her, for a fleeting instant, had turned blue. Then she nodded. She leaned forward, to whisper, but suddenly there was a crackling. “The rock!” she cried. “The rock! I must return before it is too late and I too am trapped!” She writhed, became coiling wreathes of smoke, and the smoke flowed back to the rocks, hovered over it. The four pillars quivered and joined into one and then, in a twinkling, had crumbled to powder.

But there was an uncanny blueness in the air about Redforth. And that night he had a dreadful dream.

For he had become--Yrthicaol! And EIRY had been merely--THE BAIT!

Aw G’wan! by Henry Hasse

THERE! If “Foo E. Onya”, in the last issue, could use a pseudonym so can I. I read his article, I’M THROUGH, with varying degrees of interest. If an answer were really necessary, it could be found more appropriately in the two words of my title above, than in any words that might follow. And that brings up my first point in my rebuttal--

Why is it that people, including the lowly science-fiction fan, (to paraphrase Mr. Onya) always feel it necessary to hide behind a pseudonym when they have something to say which they think will displease someone? I’ve seen this happen so many times! And, coincidently, why SHOULD Mr. Onya take such pains to be unpleasent in print? Why should he feel it necessary to make one final, grand broadcast to the effect that he will no longer read paltry science-fiction? Does he think that any real lover of sci-fic gives a damn whether there is one less reader, especially a reader who crawls behind such a silly pseudonym as “Onya”? I’ve seen other broadcasts such as Mr. Onya’s, and they always puzzled me. It surely can be nothing else but the egotistical urge.

But I’m convinced that Onya isn’t half so bitter really against sci-fiction as he tries to pretend. He’s not really through. Because anyone really bitter against and through with sci-fic would simply stop reading it, not start deriding it! And I doubt if any person, once a fan, has ever completely broken away from sci-fic, THEY ALWAYS COME BACK.

And right here I’d like to say that a good deal of my doubt as to Onya’s sincerity is because I’m fairly certain of the fellow’s real identity. The general tone of his article, and several clues he divulged, convince me I’m right. And if I AM right, I can assure you, Brad, and any other readers who nay have been picqued at Onya’s tone, that he shouldn’t be taken seriously, and the less attention paid to his rantings, the better. I’m sure Onya would feel flattered if he thot someone took his article so seriously as to answer it. Yet here I am answering it, and damned if I know why, except that I think I took some of Mr. Onya’s phrasing personally, almost. I don’t think he should have gone to the extent of calling names and using words such as “moronic”, “arrogant”, etc.

Aside from this his piece seemed to me a conglomeration of contradictions, inconsistencies, praises here, derisions there, pats on the back, exaggerations, sneers and scorn, and, oh yes, a book review. Yes, I liked and appreciated and mostly agreed with Onya’s comments on BRAVE NEW WORLD. It’s a book which I’m sure sure many of the moronic sci-fic fans appreciated as well as Mr, Onya. But here’s where Mr. Onya’s and my tastes differ slightly, for I also liked PLANET OF THE KNOB HEADS in the Dec. issue of SCIENCE FICTION, whereas Mr. Onya probably wouldn’t deign to read it because it’s in one of the pulp mags. that he so deplores; thereby Mr. Onya would be missing a really entertaining and meaningful piece of writing, but that’s all right, since Mr. Onya’s own words said: “There is so much else of importance that has been written--”.

You know, somehow I cannot bring myself to be as vitriolic against Mr. Onya as he was against sfn at moments. He tried hard to work up a case against sfn, poor fellow, and became (to me at least) amusing instead of convincing. Do you know what I saw? I saw a person who is temporarily satiated, as he said, with sfn, --but more than that, a person who is merely trying to persuade himself, more than other people, that sfn is as bad as he painted it! Naturally every fan has his likes and dislikes of the various stories, authors and magazines. Some have more dislikes than likes. I think even I do. But it must be admitted that every once in a while, usually unexpectedly, there pops up a story which is a delectable gem and a masterpiece, either of ingenuity or writing or both. Then one is exultant, and one continues reading sfn, even some trite and bad sfn, knowing that regularly he will encounter one of the gems which he wouldn’t have missed reading for the world! Meanwhile we have with us Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, Stanton Coblentz (delightful sometimes, not always), A. Merritt, and an occasional few others, whose work I doubt if even Mr. Onya could glibly pronounce as ordinary pulp. And we did have Lovecraft, Weinbaum, Howard, and others of whom the same thing can be said.

Naturally, too, a lot of criticism can be directed against sfn and sfn readers. A lot of criticism can be directed against everything, and usually is, by certain people who take an unholy delight in it. I myself have sometimes snorted in wrath at the gross egotism and, yes, stupidity and childishness, of certain fans. I would have taken great delight in kicking their blooming teeth down their bloody well bally throats. But did I do this? Did I succumb to this desire? No, I did not. I never got close enough. A more important reason is that I had the patience to realize this type of fan is a minority (not a majority, Mr. Onya, by any means!). But what I did not do was write bitter articles about it.

Here is only one of Mr. Onya’s inconsistencies: he makes such statements as “fans are arrogant, blind, critically moronic”, etc.--and “editors and writers as well cannot see anything beyond their own perverted models.” In virtually the next breath he admires P. Schuyler Miller’s intellectuality. Yet P. Schuyler Miller continues to write sfn, reads it, and is one of the active fans.

Furthermore, I disagree outright and violently with Onya’s statement, “When literature becomes possessed of ideas as such, it is no longer literature.” And I’d like to challenge Onya to a further debate on this, if he dares. Also his statement about Wells’ early stories. It so happens (what a coincidence!) that I also read Wells’ EXPERIMENT IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY--and yes, while Wells did admit his early sfn stories were a preparation for his later and more serious writing, he did not disclaim them as not being literature of their own type. The trouble with Mr. Onya, I’m afraid, is that he has (deliberately?) lost sight of the fact that there is literature and literature. Instead, he wants everything to conform precisely to his own rather peculiar conception of literature. I’ll make a statement right here that will undoubtedly shock Mr. Onya: I’ll go so far as to say that pulp fiction, even the pulpiest of pulp fiction, is really and truly LITERATURE, insofar as it has its own special niche, its own certain purpose for being. There, I’ve said it! I’ll admit, Mr. Onya, that it took a little courage to say it. But I ask all who read this, isn’t it true when you come to think of it?

I have not dealt with Onya’s article nearly to the extent that I might, but I don’t think it’s really necessary, mainly because, as I said, I have a very strong idea who Foo E. Onya is. I wish I could hazard my suspicion right here, but I’m so sure I’m right, and both the editor and Onya seem so determined to keep it secret, that I cannot be otherwise than silent. I will merely conclude by reiterating my doubt that you, “Foo E. Onya”, are really disclaiming sfn. At least I hope you will continue both reading and writing it. But I swear, if I ever hear of you doing so, I shall feel sorely tempted to broadcast what a hypocrite you were with that article!

The Fight Of The Good Ship Clarissa - by One Who Should Know Better

The space rocket Clarissa was nine days out from Venus. The members of the crew were also out for nine days. They were hunters, fearless expeditionists who bagged game in Venusian jungles. At the start of our story they are busy bagging their pants, not to forget their eyes. A sort of lull has fallen over the ship (Note: a lull is a time warp that frequently attacks rockets and seduces its members into a siesta). It was during this lull that Anthony Quelch sat sprawled at his typewriter looking as baggy as a bag of unripe grapefruit. ANTHONY QUELCH, the Cosmic Clamor Boy, with a face like turned linoleum on the third term, busy writing a book: “Fascism is Communism with a shave” for which he would receive 367 rubles, 10 pazinkas and incarceration in a cinema showing Gone With The Wind.

The boys upstairs were throwing a party in the control room. They had been throwing the same party so long the party looked like a worn out first edition of a trapeze artist. There is doubt in our mind as to whether they were trying to break the party up or just do the morning mopping and break the lease simultaneously. Arms, legs and heads littered the deck. The boys, it seems, threw a party at the drop of a chin. Sort of a space cataclysm with rules and little regulation--kind of an atomic convulsion in the front parlor. The neighbors never complained. The neighbors were 450 million miles away. And the boys were tighter than a catsup bottle at lunch-time. The last time the captain had looked up the hatch and called to his kiddies in a gentle voice, “HELL!” the kiddies had thrown snowballs at him. The captain had vanished. Clever way they make these space bombs nowadays. A few minutes previous the boys had been tearing up old Amazings and throwing them at one another, but now they contented themselves with tearing up just the editors. Palmer was torn in half and he sat in a corner arguing with himself about rejecting a story for an hour before someone put him through an orange juice machine killing him. (Orange juice sorry, now?)

And then they landed on Venus. How in heck they got back there so quick is a wonder of science, but there they were. “Come on, girls!” cried Quelch, “put on your shin guards, get out there and dig ditches for good old W.P.A. and the Rover Boys Academy, earth branch 27!”

Out into the staggering rain they dashed. Five minutes later they came back in, gasping, reeling. They had forgotten their corsets! The Venusians closed in like a million land-lords. “Charge, men!” cried Quelch, running the other way. And then--BATTLE! “What a fight; folks,” cried Quelch. “Twenty thousand earth men against two Venusians! We’re outnumbered, but we’ll fight!” BLOOSH! “Correction--ten thousand men fighting!” KERBLOM! “One hundred men from earth left!” BOOM! “This is the last man speaking, folks! What a fight. I ain’t had so much fun since--Help, someone just clipped my corset strings!” BWOM! “Someone just clipped me!”

The field was silent. The ship lay gleaming in the pink light of dawn that was just blooming over the mountains like a pale flower. The two Venusians stood weeping over the bodies of the Earthlings like onion peelers or two women in a bargain basement. One Venusian looked at the other Venusian, and in a high-pitched, hoarse, sad voice said: “Aye, aye, aye--THIS--HIT SHOODEN HEPPEN TO A DOG--NOT A DOIDY LEEDLE DOG!” And dawn came peacefully, like beer barrels, rolling.

The Intruder by Emil Petaja

It was in San Francisco, on the walk above the sand and surf that pounded like the heart of the earth. There was wind, the sky and sea blended in a grey mist.

I was sitting on a stone bench watching a faint hint of distant smoke, wondering what ship it was and from what far port.

Mine was a pleasent wind--loneliness. So when he came, wrapped in his great overcoat and muffler, hat pulled down, and sat on my bench I was about to rise and leave him. There were other benches, and I was not in the mood for idle gossip about Hitler and taxes.

“Don’t go. Please.” His plea was authentic.

“I must get back to my shop,” I said.

“Surely you can spare a moment.” I could not even to begin to place the accent in his voice. Low as a whisper, tense. His deep-set eyes held me ... his face was pale and had a serenity born of suffering. A placcid face, not given to emotional betrayels, yet mystical. I sat down again. Here was someone bewilderingly strange. Someone I wouldn’t soon forget. He moved a hand toward me, as tho to hold me from going, and I saw with mild curiosity that he wore heavy gloves, like mittens.

“I am not well. I ... I must not be out in the damp air,” I said. “But today I just had to go out and walk. I had to.”

“I can understand.” I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in his words. “I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visited your shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of the covers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right?”

I nodded, “But how...”

“You have tried writing, but have had no success. Alone in the world, your loneliness has much a family man, harassed might envy.”

“That’s true,” I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fake mystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to his pocket-book. His next words were a little amused, but he didn’t smile.

“No, I’m not a psychic--in the ordinary sense, I’ve visited your shop. I was there only yesterday,” he said. And I remembered him. In returning from my lunch I had met him coming out of my humble place of business. One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, and I recalled pausing to watch his stiff-legged progress down the street and around the corner.

There was now a pause, while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiled walk in the growling wind. Then a sound like a sigh came from my companion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly of a sudden, as tho approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me as it had not before, I wanted to leave.

“Dare I tell you? DARE I!” His white face turned upward. It was as though he questioned some spirit in the winds.

I was silent; curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not be allowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still.

“Were you ever told, as a child, that you must not attempt to count the stars in the sky at night--that if you did you might lose your mind?”

“Why, yes. I believe I’ve heard that old superstition. Very reasonable, I believe; based on the assumption that the task would be too great for one brain. I...”

“I suppose it never occurred to you,” he interrupted, “that this superstition might hold even more truth than that, truth as malignant as it is vast. Perhaps the cosmos hold secrets beyond comprehension of man; and what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind? Is nature rather not terrible, than kind? In the stars are patterns--designs which if read, might lure the intrepid miserable one who reads them out of earth and beyond ... beyond, to immeasurable evil ... Do you understand what I am saying?” His voice quivered metallically, was vibrant with emotion.

I tried to smile, but managed only a sickly grin. “I understand you, sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such as that without any shred of evidence.”

“There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe that men have lost their minds from incessant study of the stars?”

“Perhaps some have, I don’t know,” I returned. “But in the South of this state in one of the country’s leading observatories, I have a friend who is famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I. If not saner.” I tacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis.

The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied I caught the words “danger...” and “fools...” We were silent again. Low dark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified.

Presently, in his clipt speech, the stranger said, “Do you believe that life exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered what kind of life might inhabit the other stars in this solar system, and those beyond it?” His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and they bewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible and awful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander might be questioned about things with which the asker is familiar, as I might ask a New Yorker, “What do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“I wouldn’t attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man,” I said. “Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers of fiction.” I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, but inwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. I suddenly realized, with childish fear, that night was falling.

“Writers of fiction! And what if they were to guess too well? What then? Is it safe for them to have full rein over their imaginations? Like the star-gazers...” I said nothing, but smiled.

“Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond most earthly minds--those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps those who are Beyond are not yet ready to make themselves known to Earthlings? And maybe THEY, are annoyed with the puny publicity they receive from imaginative writers ... Ask yourself, what is imagination? Are earth-minds capable of conceiving that which is not and has never been; or is this imagination merely a deeper insight into worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes of dream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakened from a dream with the sinister feeling that all was not well inside your mind?--that while you, the real you, were away in Limbo--someone--something was probing in your mind, invading it and reading it. Might not THEY leave behind them in departure shadowy trailings of their own minds?”

Now I was indeed speechless. For a strange nothing had started my neck-hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well ... Two, no three, writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yet inevitable dooms; writers I had known; had recently died, by accident.

“What of old legends? Of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun. That legend dates back to Mu and Atlantis. Who, man, was and is Satan? Christ? And Jehovah? benevolent and all-saving, were but a monstrous jest fostered by THEY to keep man blindly content, and keep him divided among himself so that he strove not to unravel the stars?”

“Man, in my foolish youth I studied by candleflame secrets that would scorch your very soul. Of women who with their own bare hands have strangled the children they bore so that the world might not know ... Disease and sickness at which physicians throw up their hands in helpless bafflement. When strong men tear at their limbs and heads and agony--seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselves into their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own abominable significance. It is THEM. Who are eternal and nameless, who send their scouts down to test earth-man. Don’t you realize that they have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble, and finally walk? And that they are waiting, biding their time...” I shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then, bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly: “How do you know this? Are you one of THEM?” He shook his head violently. “No, no!” I made as to go, feeling an aching horror within me.

“Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell you all. I will not describe them. And I will not assay that which, when upon first seeing you here by the sea, I first intended...” I listened. Not daring to look at him; as in the grip of daemonaic dream. My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have been unable to write with them until now. He concluded thus:

“So you see that I am everywhere a worldless alien. Sometimes this secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must feel the presence of someone human near me, else I shall attempt to commit suicide and again fail. It is without end--my horror. Have pity on me, man of earth, as I have had pity on you.”

It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading desperation into his staring eyes. “Why have you told me? What--” My voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered.

He understood. Shrieked one word: “PITY!” into my insensible ear, and was gone.

That was 3 nites ago and each nite since has been hell. I cannot remember how long it was after the STRANGER left that I found myself able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And I cannot--WILL NOT--reveal to you all that I heard.

I thot myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent. But I wonder if he is wrong.

I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; and he fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, no bio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe--where THEY dwell. And THEY knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, and sent him back to earth... “They are waiting!” he shrieked, in his grating skeleton of a voice. “They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time--when Man has progressed into a ripeness--THEY will descend! Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!”

Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spoke evasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself, what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf the INTRUDER wore a meticulously painted metal mask--to hide what I must not see...

Asphodel: by E. T. PINE

Down where skies are always dark,
Where is ever heard the bark
Of monstrous ebon hounds of hell,
In a dreadful fearsome knell,
Never fading, ever bright,
With a weird and spectral light,
Blooms a flower of ancient days,
Shining in a crimson maze;
When the black bat shrilly screams
Asphodel, you haunt my dreams--
From the lands of distant death
Steals the perfume of your breath:
Some night soon the wind will blow
Saffron seeds to fall and grow
By my casement window, where,
Sleeps my loved one, still and fair;
Then, the night you are to bloom
I shall creep from out my room,
From your blossom by the wall
Shall I hear her dear voice call:
Mournfully the wind will cry,
And shadows cover all the sky--
My lips will touch the loved dead
When where you nod I lay my head...

Marmok by Emil Pataja

Sleep that doth harbour a dream of dread,
Whence come the fingers that beckoned and led
My dream-stung soul from my canopied bed--
Whither dost take me, ere I am dead?
Beyond the skull-grinning mid-March moon
Over the phosphorous-lit lagoon
Out past the darkest pits of the night,
Fast thru the stars in this evil flight;
Lead thee me out past the rim of space,
Show me that ravenous, pain-black face,
Marmok, whose myrmidons ever are questing
For souls who wander at nite, unresting.
Then shall I know an ultimate bliss
Tasting the fury of that cosmic kiss,
Whilst my earth-cloak lies limply on the floor
To waken and gibber forevermore.

What is the dim monstrosity that shimmers across the stars, what hand is that to cradle planets, earth and mars. What misshapen gargantuan of nebulous formed flesh, hurls out its flood of darkness, the systems to enmesh. What is it walks across the universes chanting cosmic choruses with endless verses--what thing unutterable has visited our Earth long years ago, and now, tonite, returns, in the shadows lurking glow. What ancient fear is with me, cold and terrible? Is that the shape of man upon the constellations, blotting out the light--or something gasping in hideous delight, plucking at the planets in insanity, at play, causing suns to boil like cauldrons, meteors to sing upon their way with mournful voices, lost ghosts upon lonely trails--wailing--wailing. Is tonight our rendezvous with the Cosmos Thing, the Colossus bigger than Andromeda that sits upon the throne of space--or are these fantasies upon my aged eyes?

Hades

Upon the shores of molten seas stand men, stand men alone,
And down below, in the molten flow, in the waves that cry and moan
Are women bare with flaming hair, whose passions have no surcease.
And in the air, midst the scarlet glare, are more who will never
know Peace.

The Best Ways To Get Around

I don’t mean socially; I mean off the Earth and between the planets. There are a few really good ways, as invented by perspiring authors in science-fiction magazines. And if I miss any, which is extremely doubtful, remember that I’m writting from memory, that I hadn’t read all the scientifiction magazines from 1926 and on, and that I am not going to go researching through the tremendous stacks of old scientifiction magazines that I now have in my possession.

Now, what DO I mean by THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND? Briefly, by the word BEST, I mean so pseudo-logical that you could almost leave off the “pseudo”. See? (No)

For instance, Jack Williamson’s geodesic machinery, wherein he warps space around, appeals to me as being pure fairy tale stuff. He just gives a lot of verbal hocus-pocus, and runs off reams of litterary fertilizer until we throw up our hands in disgust and say; “O.K., O.K., Jack, to hell with that, let’s get on with the ‘story’. We’ll grant you that you can get around.”--And we’re willing to grant E.E. Smith the same privilege. He DOES get around--anybody disagree? The question is; how? Oh, by useing “X”, and the inertialess drive. The same with brother Burroughs. What do we care if dear old John Carter “yearns” himself to Mars? He gets there, and we are happy, or were happy.