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  “Oh no!” she cried to herself. “It can’t be like that! Something must be left of me; something which can look down and watch all these heart-aching things.” She could not imagine final blackness, final sleep. When you sleep something is still there experiencing the sleep, and when she tried to imagine what a final sleep would be like there was always a watcher observing the blackness, screaming at it, banishing it with a flick of the mind. She would see herself hand in hand with her mother walking round the local shops or sitting in their sunny upstairs room drinking tea together and laughing. Tears of sorrow continually leaked from her eyes, but there was not much fear of the end, only a kind of disgust that her body would probably twist about and choke for lack of air.

  McPrince held a hand out to her once as she caught her weeping. “What are you thinking about?’ she asked gently. “Come here. Tell me.”

  Miriam caught the one good hand and sat silent for a long while. Then she said, “You must think me a silly baby the way I called you ‘mother’, but my mother was, is, the center of everything good in life to me and I miss her terribly. I couldn’t resist calling you ‘mother’; you are so like her.”

  “Why did you leave her?” asked McPrince.

  Miriam shrugged and looked a little guilty. “I used to think it was to make her happy, you know, to see me married. It isn’t easy for a girl to get married these days, is it? But I realize now that that wasn’t the reason…in any case, it didn’t make her happy, she was terribly upset when I told her. No; I think it was that I knew I had to break the bond if I was to have any life of my own. I guess I knew I could never find it while I remained on Earth. I applied for this flight on the spur of the moment…like a prison-break.”

  She hung her head. “It was intolerably selfish, but I can’t help it.”

  McPrince gripped her hand. “When life takes hold of you, you don’t stand much chance,” she said. “Don’t blame yourself. Every girl on this ship did the same thing. Now forget it, my girl, and attend to business. Make up some kind of a bed for yourself and then see if you can find the food tablets. There was a box of them in that cupboard over in the corner.”

  The second day took twice as long to pass. The air pressure sank no lower; they did not die. Bellini had an hour of shrieking and howling and pushing at the connecting door, then he relapsed into groans and finally silence. McPrince was able to get out of bed and, with Miriam’s help, dress herself in a spare uniform. They talked about the possibility that there was someone alive on the ship who had managed to seal the leaks in the hull: how else could the air pressure remaining stable be explained? They listened for long stretches at the surgery door hoping to hear footsteps outside. They talked about life on Mars. Miriam produced Franco Parzetti’s photograph.

  “He looks a nice boy,” said McPrince. “Sensible. Not like.…” She nodded at the ward door. “How did you manage to get mixed up with him?” There was a lot of talk about that. The day eventually finished and they slept.

  Day three began at double speed. In the small hours there was a tremendous noise and Bellini smashed his way into the surgery. His strength seemed to have doubled. He was waving the scissors Miriam had used to make splints and he obviously intended to do some cutting up himself. He had patiently used the scissors to chisel away the door jam round the lock and his eventual rush carried the door, the barricade and the bed before him.

  McPrince had been in the bed and Miriam on the padded examination table in the center of the surgery. The bed was thrown over on its side and McPrince to the floor where she fainted with pain. Miriam, shocked into a confused awakening, flung herself sideways as Bellini plunged at her. She knocked over the mobile lamp and there was blackness. Bellini lunged in the darkness and buried the scissor points in padding. Miriam hit the floor and scampered off on hands and knees dragging blankets after her. Bellini stepped on a moving blanket and fell backwards, hitting his head on something that did not give way. He, too, fainted. There was a long period of respiratory noises.

  Then: “Mary?”

  More breathing.… “Tony?”

  Miriam felt her way along the wall to the surgery door and then up the wall to the main light switch. All was revealed. Miriam did not waste time. She scrambled bandages out of a cupboard and tied Bellini’s hands and feet into an interlocked bundle. She then found the hypogun and loaded it with one of the ‘sleep’ ampoules. Then she looked at McPrince. Blood was staining the sheets wrapped round her, and when Miriam carefully unraveled her she found the bandages across McPrince’s back were soaked. Whether the bone in the arm had come unset she could not tell, but the binding and strapping still looked firm.

  With the scissors she cut away the bandages from McPrince’s back and then began tearing the sheets into large swabs, gradually drying the flow of blood. McPrince groaned and roused. Quickly Miriam re-bandaged the torn area. She made an oblong of blankets beside McPrince on the floor and eased her on to it. “Don’t move. Let the bleeding stop. How is your arm?”

  McPrince grimaced. “All right, I think. Thank you, Miriam. I shall be fine now.” She looked over at Bellini’s slowly moving body. “I see you’ve dealt with him. Good girl. He’ll need medication.… Or maybe the bang on the head will have brought him to his senses.” She looked surprised. “It seems to have brought me to my senses. I remember now there is a key to the door.” She looked around and then nodded. “In that drawer.”

  “A key!” exclaimed Miriam. “You mean the door is only locked, not jammed? But I thought you never locked the surgery.”

  “It was because I was sleeping here,” said McPrince, and she hoped it sounded convincing. Miriam found the key and put it in the lock.

  “Supposing…,” she said, looking back at McPrince. Then took a grip on herself and opened the door. There were no corpses outside.

  * * * *

  The reunion with the crew and 500 passengers went off very well. All the women were convinced they had escaped death by miracles of bravery on the part of the crew, and the crew were well rehearsed in their stories of damage caused by the Perseids.

  If there was any lingering doubt about the authenticity of the Perseids the appearance of McPrince pale and properly bandaged dispelled them. There was also the tangible evidence of Bellini’s confinement to the brig for the rest of the outward voyage. That would have been carrying a trick too far,

  When the women landed on Mars all were delighted with the moderate temperature, the brightness of the distant sun, and by the positively soupy thickness of the air. Most of all they were delighted with the warmth of the waiting men. Franco Parzetti was a lulu.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BRIAN BALL was born in 1932, in Cheshire. England. Much of his substantial body of novels—science fiction, supernatural, detective thrillers, and childrens’ fiction—was produced whilst Ball simultaneously was pursuing an academic career as a Lecturer in English at Doncaster College of Education, and serving as a Visiting Professor to the University of British Colombia, Vancouver,

  Ball began by writing science fiction short stories for New Worlds and Science Fantasy, but very quickly made the transition to full-length sf novels, beginning with Simdog in 1965. His early SF novels, whilst action-packed adventure stories, were also rich in meta­physical speculation, qualities that quickly brought him interna­tional recognition. Of especial note was his trilogy about an ancient Galactic Federation. Timepiece (1968). Timepivot (1970), and Planet Probability (1973). By 1971 he had begun to diversify into supernatural novels with consider­able success, and in 1974 his first detective novel. Death of a Low-Handicap Man, was published to wide acclaim. This novel is currently in print from Wildside Press, and a sequel. Death on the Driving Range (2009), is scheduled to appear from the Borgo Press, along with the best of his detective and supernatural novels. In 2004 Ball resumed writing short stories for Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventures anthologies, published by Wildside Press. His Borgo Press books include: The Venomous Serpent: A Novel of Horr
or (2013), The Baker Street Boys: Two Baker Street Irregular Novellas (2012), The Evil of Monteine: A Novel of Horror (Ruane #2), 2012, Mark of the Beast: A Novel of Horror (Ruane #1), 2011, and Malice of the Soul (forthcoming).

  ANTONIO BELLOMI, who was born in Milan, Italy, in 1945, has been prominent in all sectors of Italian genre publishing as a writer, agent, translator, and editor of books and magazine series (mostly science fiction, but including detective and western stories). His many successful science fiction series titles include, most notably, Spazio 2000, Solaris and the Italian edition of Perry Rhodan, which ran for sixty-six issues. Bellomi was the first Italian editor to extensively republish John Russell Fearn in Italy, including the first posthumous publication of such detective novels as The Man Who Was Not and Reflected Glory. Bellomi’s own SF novels and short stories have appeared in all the leading Italian magazines, including the Italian edition of Playboy. Altogether he has published more than 300 stories in many genres, including juvenile stories and comic strips. In recent years he has specialized in scientific detective stories. “The Broken Sequence,” featuring his ‘planetologist’ SF detective character Uriel Queta, was specially translated by the author for Fantasy Adventures.

  Brighton-born English writer SYDNEY J. BOUNDS (1920-2006) was a leading prewar science fiction fan, but his professional writing career did not begin until after the war, when his first story “Strange Portrait,” a supernatural tale, appeared in the first (and only) issue of Outlands in 1946. He soon switched to contributing ‘spicy’ stories to the monthly periodicals produced by Utopia Press. He also wrote hard-boiled gangster novels for John Spencer under such pseudonyms as ‘Brett Diamond’ and ‘Rick Madison’, and contributed short stories to their line of SF magazines, including Futuristic Science Stories, Tales of Tomorrow, and Worlds of Fantasy.

  Along with writing five SF novels during the 1950s, Bounds soon became a regular contributor to the magazines New Worlds Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories, and Fantastic Universe. Later, he was a prolific contributor to the anthology series New Writings in SF, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, the Armada Monster Book, and the Armada Ghost Book.

  One of his best-known stories, “The Circus”, was scripted by George A. Romero for a 1986 episode of the syndicated television series, Tales from the Darkside. In 2013 Universal and Qwerty Films released a film starring Liev Schrieber, The Last Days on Mars, based on one his best short stories (“The Animators,” 1975). Bounds also pursued parallel careers as a successful children’s writer and a western novelist. In the late 1970s he wrote a number of science fiction novels for an Italian publisher, together with some new supernatural and crime stories.

  The first-ever collections of the author’s SF and fantasy stories were published in two volumes by Wildside Press: The Best of Sydney J. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories and The Wayward Ship and Other Stories, both edited by Philip Harbottle. The same editor also invited Bounds to write new supernatural and SF stories that appeared regularly in each issue of Fantasy Annual and Fantasy Adventures (Wildside Press), whilst a number of his best horror stories were anthologized by Stephen Jones.

  Bounds published more than forty novels, beginning with a detective thriller in 1950, A Coffin for Clara (AKA Carla’s Revenge), but soon switched to writing SF and westerns, most notably his ‘Savage’ series, begun in 2000, with the eighth and last novel, Savage Rides West appearing posthumously in 2007. He also returned to writing detective novels, including The Cleopatra Syndicate (1990 Italian, 2007 English), Enforcer (2005), The Girl Hunters (2005), Murder in Space (2005), and Boomerang (2008).

  The best of Bounds’ SF and detective novels are presently being reprinted by the Borgo Press, among them: Carla’s Revenge (2013), Boomerang (2012), Time for Murder (2012), and The World Wrecker (2011).

  British author ERIC BROWN was born in Yorkshire in 1950, and his first science fiction short stories were published in Interzone in the late 1980s, to immediate acclaim. He went on to win The British Science Fiction Award for his short stories “Hunting the Slarque” and “Children of Winter” in 1999 and 2001. He has published more than a score of novels, beginning with Meridian Days in 1992. In the 1980s, Brown travelled throughout Asia, which afforded him authentic Indian background material for a number of his SF novels, such as Bengal Station (2004). His latest novel is Weird Space: Satan’s Reach (2013). His short stories “The Tapestry of Time” and “Uncertain World” were written especially for Fantasy Adventures, and he has since published several collections of short stories, his latest being Salvage Infinity (2013).

  FREDERICK H. CHRISTIAN, the pen name of noted British author Frederick Nolan, was born in Liverpool in 1931. His first book was The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall (1965), which was well received. He later founded the English Western Society, which brought him to the attention of Corgi Books (Bantam Books UK), for whom he became editor of their westerns line. He started writing westerns of his own under the pen name of Frederick H. Christian. Nolan created his own western hero “Angel” for another UK publisher, with great success, the novels soon being reprinted in America.

  But Nolan had even greater writing ambitions, and quit his highly paid job to become a full-time writer. He became an internationally bestselling novelist, and his book The Oshawa Project was filmed by MGM as Brass Target, starring Sophia Loren. Since then Nolan has written many successful thrillers, historical novels, biographies, and radio and TV scripts.

  ANDREW DARLINGTON, born and still living in Yorkshire, is a writer, critic and journalist, who is an expert in the fields of both popular music and science fiction. His book reviews and biographical studies of writers and musicians and vocalists have appeared widely in magazines and on-line, and his own short stories are distinguished by an intense frisson of both traditional and new-wave storytelling. He has contributed several powerful stories to both Fantasy Annual and Fantasy Adventures.

  JOHN RUSSELL FEARN (1908-1960) was one of the first British writers to break into the American pulp science fiction magazine market of the 1930s and ’40s, but he also wrote 180 novels and hundreds of short stories of fantasy, horror, westerns, romance, crime fiction, and suspense, under numerous pseudonyms. His most popular series features the Golden Amazon, who was operated upon by a scientist when a child; this gave her superhuman physical powers and intelligence. Borgo Press has published over sixty of his novels and collections to date, including the twenty-one-volume Golden Amazon Saga, the five-volume Black Maria classic crime novel series, and many other mysteries, science fiction, horror, and romance novels.

  JOHN GLASBY (1928-2011), a British writer, was an extraordinarily prolific writer of science fiction novels and short stories, his first books appearing in the summer of 1952 from Curtis Warren Ltd. under various house pseudonyms such as ‘Rand Le Page’ and ‘Berl Cameron’, as was the fashion of the day. Late in 1952, he began an astonishing asso­ciation with the London publisher, John Spencer Ltd., which was to last more than twenty years. Glasby quickly became Spencer’s main author, writing hundreds of stories and novels on commissions in several genres. The best known of his plethora of pseudonyms was ‘A. J. Merak’, under which a number of his science fiction novels were reprinted in the 1960s in the United States.

  When his association with John Spencer ended, he sold a science fiction novel under his own name to an American publisher (Project Jove, 1971). Always a great fan of the work of H. P. Lovecraft, he then began writing Cthulhu Mythos stories, including Dark Armageddon, a trilogy of novels that unifies Lovecraft’s conception of the Elder Gods and Old Ones. During the early 1960s, he also wrote dozens of paperback westerns, all of which were reprinted in hardcover. In recent years new supernatural stories have appeared in magazines and original collections edited by leading horror antholo­gist Stephen Jones, and in Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventures anthologies (published by Wildsi
de Press).

  Also revived were his 1960s ‘Johnny Merak’ private-eye novels, which are being reprinted by Borgo Press. An all-new collection of ghost stories, The Substance of a Shade, was published in the UK in 2003, followed by The Dark Destroyer, a new supernatural novel, in 2005. In 2007 was authorized to continue John Russell Fearn’s famous ‘Golden Amazon’ series, and three novels, Seetee Sun, The Sun Movers, and The Crimson Peril, have appeared to date; a fourth novel, Primordial World, has yet to be published.

  Many of the best of Glasby’s SF, supernatural, and detective titles are now being published by the Borgo Press, including new collections of short stories, among them The Dark Boatman, The Lonely Shadows, The Mystery of the Crater, Rackets Incorporated, Savage City, and A Time To Kill.

  English writer PHILIP E. HIGH (1914-2006) was born in Norfolk. High’s writing ambitions did not surface until after the war. He published his first SF story, “The Statics,” in Authentic Science Fiction in 1956, and saw more than forty stories appear during the next decade, all of his writing being done in his spare time whilst working full-time as a bus driver. American readers were introduced to his work in 1964 when Ace Books began to issue High’s colorful sf adventure novels, including The Prodigal Sun (1964), No Truce with Terra (1964), The Mad Metropolis (1966), These Savage Futurians (1967), and Reality Forbidden (1968). Other novels followed over the next ten years.

  Following the death of his literary agent and friend John Carnell in 1972, High retired from writing. In 1997 he was invited to contribute stories to Philip Harbottle’s new magazine Fantasy Annual. High enthusiastically responded, and his steady flow of top quality mss. was in no small way responsible for Fantasy Annual extending to five issues, before metamorphosing into Fantasy Adventures. High continued contributing to the magazine right up to the time of his untimely death, which—as noted in the editor’s introduction—was a major factor in its discontinuation. “The Wishing Stone” was his very last story, published posthumously.