Robert Arnette EMPIRE OF EVIL (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Robert Arnette

EMPIRE OF EVIL

CHAPTER I

A BLUE Mercurian, arrogance in every line of his shell-covered body, was leading a white Earth-girl up the street. The Earth-girl was practically naked. She walked with head bent, shoulders drooping—a creature without hope. The rope around her slender waist, by which the Mercurian hauled her along, had raised a cruel, circular abrasion on her otherwise smooth brown skin.

Walter M. Miller, Jr. SECRET OF THE DEATH DOME (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

SECRET OF THE DEATH DOME

THE MARTIANS came in a huge dome from out of the sky and sat it down in the desert, to watch. Earth was their zoo, and their dome an impregnable cage. So it seemed at first. Then it was whispered in the halls of Man that Earth was the cage, and the dome was the Outside. For Man had thrown himself in vain fury against the dome's outer surface, while the dome-men yawned and watched from their unassailable fortress.

Mack Reynolds ASK ME NO QUESTIONS! (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Mack Reynolds

ASK ME NO QUESTIONS!

And oft though wine has played the infidel,

And robbed me of my robes of honor, well,

I wonder often what the vintners buy

One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

—Omar

THEY'D chosen me to interrogate our Martian prisoner, not because I'd had any more experience than the others, but largely due to my research in 20th Century novels and films. Then too, I suppose, my scorn of cosmetic surgery might have had something to do with it. I've never even had my beard permanently removed and for this occasion I had let it grow several days so that my face would look as brutal as possible.

Frances M. Deegan THIS CURSE IS FOR YOU (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Frances M. Deegan

THIS CURSE IS FOR YOU

"WHEN I was a child," Sibyl told me, "I used to put curses on people."

"You did?" I mumbled, chewing toast.

We were sitting at the breakfast table at the time. I had one eye on the kitchen clock and the other on the headline story about G. F. Grando.

"GRANDO ACCUSED OF BRIBERY," the headline said blackly.

E. K. Jarvis NEVER TRUST A MARTIAN (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

E. K. Jarvis

NEVER TRUST A MARTIAN

CHAPTER I

JOHN POST came out of the cafe.

"Get your hands up, you!"

What surprised Post was not the order to get his hands up. Here in this old section of the city of Trego which even the Martians called the "native quarter", anything not only could happen but usually did. You could get stabbed here, you could get drugged, you could get your throat cut, you could get held up.

Charles Beaumont “THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?” (Amazing Stories January 1950)

Amazing Stories January 1950

Charles Beaumont

“THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?”

IT WAS two o'clock in the morning when I decided that my attendance at a meeting of The International Newspapermen's Society for the Prevention of Thirst was a matter of moral necessity. This noble Brotherhood, steeped in tradition and by now as immortal as the institution of the public press, has always been a haven, a refuge and an inspiration to weary souls in the newspaper profession. Its gatherings at Ada's Bar & Grill—Open 24 Hours A Day have made more than a few dismiss their woes for a while.

STRIP-TEASER AT SIXTEEN Minister’s wife at twenty-one (Daring Romances September 1959)

Daring Romances September 1959

STRIP-TEASER AT SIXTEEN

Minister’s wife at twenty-one

GREG'S voice came strong and clear from the pulpit as he started his sermon, and from the choir loft I looked down at him with love and tenderness and the never-ending wonder that he belonged to me. Even after being his wife for four years and the mother of his child, I still couldn't believe it had really happened to me, Bonnie Walters. But I wasn't Bonnie Walters, I corrected myself fast. I was Mrs. Gregory White, wife of the young pastor of St. Mark's church.

But just remembering that former name, Bonnie Walters, brought back ugly pictures of the past, and I squirmed there in the stuffy choir loft and tried to shut out the thoughts that came crowding in.

Bonnie Walters—that name had been plastered over the marquees of cheap night clubs and burlesque houses up and down the West Coast. "See Bonnie, Sexational Strip-Teaser," the newspaper ads had read, and men had poured into the clubs and theaters and devoured me with their eyes and shouted coarse demands as I paraded before them in a scanty costume and with a frozen, painted smile on my face.