The Voice of the Lobster E-Book

Henry Kuttner

• Herausgeber: Alien Ebooks
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 63

Beschreibung

Terence Macduff, a cunning intergalactic swindler, finds himself in a high-stakes game of wits aboard the spaceship Sutter. With a priceless plant, a mysterious beauty, and a vengeful lobster-like creature in the mix, Macduff must use every trick up his sleeve to come out on top. As tensions rise and hidden agendas unravel, can Macduff pull off the ultimate con, or will his own clever schemes finally catch up with him?

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

THE VOICE OF THE LOBSTER

COPYRIGHT NOTE

INTRODUCTION, by Eileen Hammond

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

THE VOICE OF THE LOBSTER

HENRY KUTTNER

COPYRIGHT NOTE

This classic work has been reformatted for optimal reading in ebook format on multiple devices. Punctuation and spelling has been modernized where necessary.

Copyright © 2022 by Alien Ebooks.All rights reserved.

First published Thrilling WonderStories, February 1950.

INTRODUCTION, by Eileen Hammond

Henry Kuttner wore many different hats as a writer. Science fiction writer? Check. Mystery writer? Check. Adventure writer? Check. War story writer? Check. He even worked as a literary agent (where he discovered another major talent—Leigh Brackett.)

The facts are these: Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. He worked part time for his uncle, Laurence D’Orsay, at a Los Angeles-based literary agency. All the time he wanted to be a writer, and it wasn’t long before he sold his first story: “The Graveyard Rats,” which appeared in the famous pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1936.

Kuttner became part of the “Lovecraft Circle,” a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft. They all encouraged each other, shared market information, and read each other’s stories. It was through this group that Kuttner met his future wife, fellow author C.L. Moore. They rapidly became a husband-and-wife writing team, often collaborating throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Their joint work appeared under such pseudonyms as Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell. (Other pseudonyms included Edward J. Bellin, Paul Edmonds, Noel Gardner, Will Garth, James Hall, Keith Hammond, Hudson Hastings, Peter Horn, Kelvin Kent, Robert O. Kenyon, C. H. Liddell, Hugh Maepenn, Scott Morgan, Woodrow Wilson Smith, and Charles Stoddard.) Their styles meshed so well, not even they could remember who had written which parts of stories.

When Henry Kuttner died unexpectedly from a massive heart attack in Los Angeles in 1958, it was a tragic loss for the field. He had been publishing a huge amount of high quality work in both the science fiction and mystery fields and, with the paperback publishing boom under way, was in progress of becoming one of the top writers in both fields.

“The Voice of the Lobster” was originally published in the February 1950 issue of the classic pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories. The unnecessary footnotes (which have been preserved as notes in the text) were common in science fiction magazines—I suspect the editors imagined they added an element of pseudo-scientific legitimacy.

CHAPTER 1

Getaway

Tilting his cigar at a safe angle Terence Lao-T’se Macduff applied a wary eye to the peephole in the curtain and searched the audience for trouble.

“A set-up,” he muttered under his breath. “Or is it? I have the inexplicable sensation of wet mice creeping slowly up and down my spine. What a pity I wasn’t able to get that Lesser Vegan girl to front for me. Ah, well. Here I go.”

He drew up his rotund form as the curtain slowly rose.

“Good evening to you all,” he said jovially. “I am happy to see so many eager seekers after knowledge, from the parts of the Galaxy, gathered here tonight on this, Aldebaran’s greenest world—”

Muffled noises rose from the audience, mingled with the musky odor of Aldebaranese and the scents of many other races and species. For it was Lottery Time on Aldebaran Tau and the famous celebration based on the counting of seeds in the first sphyghi-fruit of the season had as usual drawn luck-worshipers from all over the Galaxy. There was even an Earthman, with shaggy red hair and a scowling face, who sat in the front row, glaring up at Macduff.

Uneasily evading that glare, Macduff went on with some haste.

“Ladies, gentlemen and Aldebaranese, I offer you my All-Purpose Radio-isotopic Hormone Rejuvenating Elixir, the priceless discovery which will give you the golden treasury of youth at a sum easily within the reach of each and every—”

An ambiguous missile whizzed past Macduff’s head. His trained ear screened out words in a dozen different interstellar tongues and realized that none of them implied approval.

The red-haired Earthman was bellowing, “The mon’s a crook! Nae doot aboot it!” Macduff, automatically dodging an over-ripe fruit, looked pensively at him.

“Oh-oh,” Macduff was thinking. “I wonder how he found out those cards were marked for black light?”

He held up his arms dramatically for silence, took a backward step and kicked the trigger on the trap-door. Instantly he dropped out of sight. From the audience rose a tremendous bellow of balked fury. Macduff, scuttling rapidly past discarded flats of scenery, heard feet thundering above him.

“There will be chlorophyl spilled tonight,” he mused, sprinting. “That’s the trouble with these Aldebaranese, they’re still vegetables at heart. No sense of ethics, merely tropisms.”

His racing feet tripped over a half-empty box of progesterone, a hormone necessary when a sucker, or customer, was fowl or mammal strain.

“Can’t be the hormones,” he pondered, kicking boxes out of his path. “It must have been the radio-isotope. I shall write a scorching letter to that Chicago outfit. Fly-by-nights, of course. I should have suspected the quality of their product at that price. Three months, forsooth! Why, it hasn’t been a fortnight since I sold the first bottle—and it’s taken this long to finish the pay-offs and start hoping for a net profit.”

This was serious. Tonight had been the first occasion on which he hoped to put the profits from All-Purpose Radio-isotopic Hormone Rejuvenating Elixir into his own pocket. Aldebaran officials had a greed which one didn’t normally associate with vegetable ancestry. How was he going to get enough money to ensure his passage spaceward in a hurry if speed seemed indicated?

“Trouble, trouble,” Macduff murmured, as he fled down a corridor, ducked out of the exit and foresightedly sent a tower of empty boxes crashing down, blocking the door. Screams of rage came from behind him.

“Sounds like Babel,” he said, trotting. “That’s the trouble with galactic travel. Too many overemotional races.” Doubling and twisting along a planned course, he continued to mutter marginal comments, for Macduff generally moved in a haze of sotto voce remarks confidingly addressed to himself, usually approving in nature.

* * * *

After a time, deciding that he had put a safe distance between himself and justice, he slowed his pace, paused at a dingy hockshop and paid out a few coins from his paltry store. In return he was given a small battered suitcase, which contained everything necessary for a hurried departure—everything, that is, except the really vital factor. Macduff had no space-ticket.

Had he anticipated the full extent of Aldebaranese rapacity and corruption he could perhaps have brought along more pay-off funds. But he had wanted his arrival to coincide with the great sphyghi festival and time pressed. Still, there were ways. Captain Masterson of the Sutter owed him a favor and the Sutter was due to take off early next morning.

“Possibly,” Macduff ruminated, trudging on, “something might be arranged. Let me see, now. Item one. There’s Ao.” Ao was the Lesser Vegan girl whose remarkable semi-hypnotic powers would make her such an excellent front man, figuratively speaking.

“Borrowing ticket money won’t solve Item One. If I succeed in getting Ao I’ll have to deal with her guardian, Item Two.”

Item Two represented an Algolian native named Ess Pu.1