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    The Star Killers
    The Star Killers
    The Star Killers
    Ebook56 pages46 minutes

    The Star Killers

    By Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

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    About this ebook

    A war older than Man, fought among ageless stars. . . Long after Man's day was done his last strange son answered its dread challenge on an invisible world of flaming terror!



    Excerpt
    Raising one of his six metal tentacles, 6W-438 pointed to the great comet stretching off into space more than a half million miles. "We have been up near the head, and on all sides of it by virtue of our superior speed. Why not fly through it?"

    744U-21, who with Professor Jameson, headed this later expedition, expressed negation. "We don't know enough about it. The long tail is of a gaseous nature. That we do know. What we do not exactly know is whether its effects on metal might, or might not, be harmful. 168P-75 reports an element in the comet which he believes would corrode the alloy of which we are made. Its effect on the spaceship would be much the same, even though the metallic composition varies somewhat from that of our own bodies."

    "There is nothing especially worth learning by passing through the tail of the comet," the professor pointed out. "What interests us is watching the comet pass through the planetary sytem which lies in its path. As 65G-849 has told us, there will be no collision with any of the worlds. They are too few and strung out too far, yet their presence is bound to have an effect on the comet even though it may only result in a change of direction. The green sun itself being the largest body of the system, will probably exert the most change and might even bend the course of the comet a hundred and eighty degrees so that it would eventually return this way."

    Already the metal Zoromes who had once been flesh and blood creatures back on their own planet Zor in a far distant corner of the universe, had taken as much scientific data as possible, short of entering the long gaseous tail. The nucleus was solid, like a small world careening through space. That it carried or sustained any life they seriously doubted, even though they had occasionally found strange life under even stranger conditions during their travels from system to system, world to world, on their eternal exploration for the unusual.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXinXii
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781612103747
    The Star Killers

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      Book preview

      The Star Killers - Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

      The Star Killers

      By Neil R Jones

      Copyright © 1951 by Neil R Jones

      This edition published in 2011 by eStar Books, LLC.

      www.estarbooks.com

      ISBN 9781612103747

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      The publishers at eStar Books are proud to provide this quality title for your reading pleasure. At eStar Books, we specialize in the unique and unusual. To find more titles in the genres you love most, including sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction, visit us at www.estarbooks.com.

      The Star Killers

      By Neil R Jones

      A war older than Man, fought among ageless stars. . . Long after Man's day was done his last strange son answered its dread challenge on an invisible world of flaming terror!

      Chapter 1

      Revelation of the Comet

      Professor Jameson looked out through the observation port of the spaceship to where the great band of color trailed across the sky in sapphire glory. The head of the comet, a nuclear a scintillating blue, seemed almost to radiate a lifelike quality all its own, or so it seemed to the machine men of Zor, while the great long tail, through which the far off stars shone pale and subdued, spread thin and nebulous.

      We cannot stand much more of this treatment, warned 9V-474. . .

      Had anyone told the professor forty million years ago during his normal lifetime on earth that at this far flung era he would find himself an undying brain in a metal body, he would have pronounced the idea even madder than his own inspiration of indefinite preservation of his own body by having it shot off into space in a funeral rocket to become a satellite of the earth. Yet, there he stood doing exactly that, watching the comet through a set of mechanical eyes circling the base of his metal-coned head.

      He could thank his four-legged mechanical brethren, among whom he was known as 21MM392, for that. They had found his rocket satellite in the shadow of a dead and almost airless earth forty million years after the professor's death, and they had recalled his brain to life, transposing it to the coned head of a metal-cubed body.

      Raising one of his six metal tentacles, 6W-438 pointed to the great comet stretching off into space more than a half million miles. We have been up near the head, and on all sides of it by virtue of our superior speed. Why not fly through it?

      744U-21, who with Professor Jameson, headed this later expedition, expressed negation. We don't know enough about it. The long tail is of a gaseous nature. That we do know. What we do not exactly know is whether its effects on metal might, or might not, be harmful. 168P-75 reports an element in the comet which he believes would corrode the alloy of which we are made. Its effect on the spaceship would be much the same, even though the metallic composition varies somewhat from that of our own bodies.

      There is nothing especially worth learning by passing through the tail of the comet, the professor pointed out. "What interests us is watching the comet pass through the planetary sytem which lies in its path. As 65G-849 has told us, there will be no collision with any of the worlds. They are too few and strung out too far, yet their presence is bound to have an effect on the comet even though it may only result in a change of direction. The green sun

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