[p9]
FOREWORD
He left the mother ship and headed for Terra; he smiled at the instrument panel and watched the operation of the big scout ship as it rocketed toward the light ribbon of atmosphere that enveloped the planet. It was a joke, in a way. In a manner of speaking, he was the first Terran to fly an alien space ship, but he wasn’t thinking of that. He was thinking of the woman, Elizabeth Danson of Everett, Pennsylvania.
She was waiting.
And he could see the warmth of her body, sheathed in the web-like gown that seemed spun over her turgid breasts and curved hips by an army of artistic spiders. It would not be a hard thing to love a woman like that.
His fingers curled about the controls, his feet working the rudder pedals of the screaming ship as he headed for the strange darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. The space ship was operating well and the Earth lifted her curved bosom to meet his rush.
Trouble came early. The danger lights flickered in his eyes and the fear welled up within him like a flood. Fifteen hundred miles an hour and the scout ship was out of control! The behavior of the craft was erratic, as though a giant hand was slapping the silver belly as he plummeted toward the ball of the earth.
[p10]
Desperately he tried to reduce the speed of the
hurtling ship, his fingers working the buttons and
levers in a frenzy of determination. The craft
refused to respond. She whipped into a cloud bank,
headed for the sea, lifted suddenly and whirled
back toward space.
In an agony of fear he realized that he no longer was the master of the space ship - he was a prisoner in a violent, uncontrollable meteor that would finally slam him into infinity against the very earth that was to be home...
In the early hours of morning, Jean Renault of Nova Scotia fingered the wheel of his fifty foot boat through the grey ground swells of the Grand Banks, almost to the place where he would cast his nets into the water. The overcast sky was refusing to emit the sunlight and a light mist hung over the sea like a disjointed ghost. When Jean heard the whirring roar of the ship, it was too late. The silver streak whipped over his fishing boat with all the furies of the gods, and nearly tore his steadying sail away. Muttering a string of French curses, Jean picked up his radio telephone and reported in violent tones the presence of the jet to the Coast Guard.
In the half-light of early dawn, the United States and Canada whirled with reports upon the strange craft. The CQ of the National Defense system began systematically pinpointing the track of the strange craft as it raked across the adumbral sky.
Then, it was gone!
The rocketing ship had appeared over one observation station near Lake Ontario. It had been spotted by a CD worker near Auburn, N.Y., then [p11] it was gone. The last observation of the craft showed it flying an erratic track toward the mountain country of Pennsylvania.
At CQ operations office, in Washington D.C., Lt. Colonel Martin Griswold tossed the last report on his desk and pinched his lower lip thoughtfully. Colonel Delbert, sitting across from him, looked serious.
“It’s out of control,” he mused. “And it isn’t one of ours. Russian?”
“Might be.” He looked at the rugged country along the Pennsylvania, New York map for a moment, then he picked up the phone on his desk. “This is Colonel Griswold. Get me the Pentagon.”
At 0930 a special plane left Washington, bound for the town in northern Pennsylvania that had been chosen as a base of operations. On board the plane were the Secret Service men who were to track down the crashed ship.
They were several hours too late...