Hudson lay in his sleeping bag, staring at the sky. It bothered him a lot. There was not one familiar constellation, not one star that he could name with any certainty. This juggling of the stars, he thought, emphasized more than anything else in this ancient land the vast gulf of years which lay between him and the Earth where he had been-or would be-born.
All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead. As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat strained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the answer to the "sixty-four dollar" question.
It's possible that you won't agree with us that Pat Pending's latest adventure is a delightful story--possible IF you haven't been used to laughing in recent years. Blue Book printed more than a dozen of these stories by Nelson Bond about the "greatest inventulator of all time".
Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors. For the grim reality was that some deadly outer-space power had usurped control of the great artificial moon. A lovely woman had disappeared; passengers were being fleeced and enslaved; and, using fantastic disguises, imposters were using the Station for their own mysterious ends...
Just missing the tall, gaunt man who dodged down the stairs of the Earth Embassy. A figure loomed in a doorway and he snapped off a quick blaster shot at it--missed. He'd killed one man, wounded others--and was carrying papers stolen from the secret Embassy files. They had to stop him--but they couldn't! And, worlds away, the men of Department 99 watched on their galaxy-spanning view-screen. knowing they were responsible for this disaster--and powerless to do anything about it!
