SELECTED FICTION WORKS

BY L. RON HUBBARD

FANTASY

The Case of the Friendly Corpse

Death’s Deputy

Fear

The Ghoul

The Indigestible Triton

Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep

Typewriter in the Sky

The Ultimate Adventure

SCIENCE FICTION

Battlefield Earth

The Conquest of Space

The End Is Not Yet

Final Blackout

The Kilkenny Cats

The Kingslayer

The Mission Earth Dekalogy*

Ole Doc Methuselah

To the Stars

ADVENTURE

The Hell Job series

WESTERN

Buckskin Brigades

Empty Saddles

Guns of Mark Jardine

Hot Lead Payoff

A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s

novellas and short stories is provided at the back.

*Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes

Published by

Galaxy Press, LLC

7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

Hollywood, CA 90028

© 2008 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.

Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.

The Last Drop was coauthored with L. Sprague de Camp.

Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.

Cover art and llustration from Astonishing Stories and are © 1941 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-59212-827-3 ebook version

Contents

FOREWORD

THE LAST DROP

GLOSSARY

L. RON HUBBARD

IN THE GOLDEN AGE

OF PULP FICTION

THE STORIES FROM THE

GOLDEN AGE

FOREWORD

Stories from Pulp Fiction’s Golden Age

AND it was a golden age.

The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.

“Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.

The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.

In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.

Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”

Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.

In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.

Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.

Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.

This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.

Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.

L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.

Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.

—Kevin J. Anderson

KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!

The Last Drop

The Last Drop

EUCLID O’BRIEN’S assistant, Harry McLeod, looked at the bottle on the bar with the air of a man who has just received a dare.

Mac was no ordinary bartender—at least in his own eyes if not in those of the saloon’s customers—and it had been his private dream for years to invent a cocktail which would burn itself upon the pages of history. So far his concoctions only burned gastronomically.

Euclid had dismissed the importance of this bottle as a native curiosity, for it had been sent from Borneo by Euclid’s brother, Aristotle. Perhaps Euclid had dismissed the bottle because it made him think of how badly he himself wanted to go to Borneo.

Mac, however, had not dismissed it. Surreptitiously Mac pulled the cork and sniffed. Then, with determination, he began to throw together random ingredients—whiskey, yolk of an egg, lemon and a pony of this syrup Euclid’s brother had sent.

Mac shook it up.

Mac drank it down.

“Hey,” said Euclid belatedly. “Watcha doin’?”

“Mmmmm,” said Mac, eyeing the three customers and Euclid, “that is what I call a real cocktail! Whiskey, egg yolk, lemon, one pony of syrup. Here”—he began to throw together another one—“try it!”

“No!” chorused the customers.

Mac looked hurt.

“Gosh, you took an awful chance,” said Euclid. “I never know what Aristotle will dig up next. He said to go easy on that syrup because the natives said it did funny things. He says the native name, translated, means swello.”

“It’s swell all right,” said Mac. Guckenheimer, one of the customers, looked at him glumly.

“Well,” snapped Mac, “I ain’t dead yet.”

Guckenheimer continued to look at him. Mac looked at the quartet.

“Hell, even if I do die, I ain’t giving you the satisfaction of a free show.” And he grabbed his hat and walked out.

Euclid looked after him. “I hope he don’t get sick.”

Guckenheimer looked at the cocktail Mac had made and shook his head in distrust.

Suddenly Guckenheimer gaped, gasped and then wildly gesticulated. “Look! Oh, my God, look!”

A fly had lighted upon the rim of the glass and had imbibed. And now, before their eyes, the fly expanded, doubled in size, trebled, quadrupled . . .

Euclid stared in horror at this monster, now the size of a small dog, which feebly fluttered and flopped about on shaking legs. It was getting bigger!

Euclid threw a bung starter with sure aim. Guckenheimer and the other two customers beat it down with chairs. A few seconds later they began to breathe once more.

Euclid started to drag the fly toward the garbage can and then stopped in horror. “M-Mac drank some of that stuff!”

Guckenheimer sighed. “Probably dead by now then.”

“But we can’t let him wander around like that! Swelling up all over town! Call the cops! Call somebody! Find him!”

Guckenheimer went to the phone, and Euclid halted in rapid concentration before his tools of trade.

“I gotta do something. I gotta do something,” he gibbered.

Chivvis, a learned customer, said, “If that stuff made Mac swell up, it might make him shrink too. If he used lemon for his, he got an acid reaction. Maybe if you used limewater for yours, you would get an alkaline reaction.”

Euclid’s paunch shook with his activity. Larkin, the third customer, caught a fly and applied it to the swello cocktail. The fly rapidly began to get very big. Euclid picked up the loathsome object and dunked its proboscis in some of his limewater cocktail. Like a plane fading into the distance, it grew small.

“It works!” cried Euclid. “Any sign of Mac?”

“Nobody has seen anything yet,” said Guckenheimer. “If anything does happen to him and he dies, the cops will probably want you for murder, Euclid.”

“Murder? Me? Oh! I shoulda left this business years ago. I shoulda got out of New York while the going was good. I shoulda done what I always wanted and gone to Borneo! Guckenheimer, you don’t think they’ll pin it on me if anything happens to Mac?”

Guckenheimer suddenly decided not to say anything. Chivvis and Larkin, likewise, stopped talking to each other. A man had entered the bar—a man who wore a Panama hat and a shoulder-padded suit of the latest Broadway design, a man who had a narrow, evil face.

Frankie Guanella sat down at the bar and beckoned commandingly to Euclid.

“Okay, O’Brien,” said Guanella, “this is the first of the month.”

O’Brien had longed for Borneo for more reasons than one, but that one was big enough—Frankie Guanella, absolute monarch of the local corner gang, who exacted his tribute with regularity.

“I ain’t got any dough,” said O’Brien, made truculent by Mac’s possible trouble.

“No?” said Guanella. “O’Brien, we been very reasonable. The las’ guy who wouldn’t pay out a policy got awful boint when his jernt boined down.”

And just to show his aplomb, Guanella reached out and tossed off one of the cocktails which had been used on the flies.

In paralyzed horror the four stared at Guanella, wondering if he would go up or shrink.

“Hey, who’s the funny guy?” said Guanella, snatching off his hat, his voice getting shriller. He looked at the band. “No, it’s got my ’nitials.” He clapped it back on and it fell over his face.

With a squeal of alarm he tumbled off the stool. Whatever he intended to do, he was floundering around the floor in clothes twice too big for him. Shrill, mouselike squeaks issued from the pile of clothing. Chivvis and Larkin and Guckenheimer looked around bug-eyed. Presently the Panama detached itself from the pile of clothes and began to run around the room on a pair of small bare legs.

A customer had just come in, and had started to climb a stool. He looked long and carefully at the hat. Then he began tiptoeing out. Before he reached the door, the hat started toward the door also. The customer went out with an audible swish, the hat scuttling after him.

“Oh, my!” said O’Brien. “He won’t like that. No, sir! He’s sensitive about his size anyway. We better do something before he brings his whole mob back. Will you telephone again, Mr. Guckenheimer?”

As Guckenheimer moved to do so, O’Brien went into furious action to make another shrinko cocktail. He was just about to add the syrup when the shaker skidded out of his trembling hands and smashed on the floor. O’Brien took a few seconds of hard breathing to get himself under control. Then he hunted up another shaker and began over again. If Mac’s swello cocktail had contained a pony of syrup, an equal amount in the shrinko cocktail ought to just reverse the effect. He made a triple quantity just to be on the safe side.

Guckenheimer waddled back from the booth.

“They found him!” he cried. “He’s down by the McGraw-Hill building, hanging on to the side. He says he doesn’t dare let go for fear his legs will break under his weight!”

“That’s right,” said Chivvis. “It accords with the square-cube law. The cross-sectional area, and hence the strength in compression, of his leg bones would not increase in proportion to his mass—”

“Oh, forget it, Chivvis!” snapped Larkin. “If we don’t hurry—”

“—he’ll be dead before we can help him,” finished Guckenheimer.

O’Brien was hunting for a thermos bottle he remembered having seen. He found it, and had just poured the shrinko cocktail into it and screwed the cap on when three men entered the Hole in the Wall. One of them carried Frankie Guanella in the crook of his arm. Guanella, now a foot tall, had a handkerchief tied diaperwise around himself. The three diners, now the only customers in the place, started to rise.

One of the newcomers pointed a pistol at them, and said conversationally, “Sit down, gents. And keep your hands on the table. Thass right.”

“Whatchgonnado?” said O’Brien, going pale under his ruddiness.

“Don’t get excited, Jack. You got an office in back, ain’tcha? We’ll use it for the fight.”

“Fight?”

“Yep. Frankie says nothing will satisfy him but a dool. He’s sensitive about his size, poor little guy.”

“But—”

“I know. You’re gonna say it wouldn’t be fair, you being so much bigger’n him. But we’ll fix that. You make some more of that poison you gave him, so you’ll both be the same size.”

“But I haven’t any more of the stuff!”

“Too bad, Jack. Then I guess we’ll just have to let you have it. We was going to give you a sporting chance, too.” And he raised the gun.

“No!” cried O’Brien. “You can’t—”

“What’s he got in that thermos bottle?” piped Frankie. “Make him show it. He just poured it outa that glass and it smells the same!”

“Don’t!” yelped O’Brien. He grabbed at the bottle of Borneo syrup and the thermos in the vain hope of beating his way out. But too many hands were reaching for him.

And then came catastrophe! The zealous henchmen, in their tackle, sent both syrup and thermos flying against the beer taps. The splinter of glass was music in O’Brien’s ears. The syrup was splattered beyond retrieve, for most of it had gone down the drain. But O’Brien had no more than started to breathe when he realized that only the syrup bottle had broken. The thermos, no matter how jammed up inside, still contained the shrinko cocktail.

What would happen now? If he drank that shrinko he might never, never, never again be able to get any syrup to swell up again!

One of the gangsters, having vaulted the bar, was unscrewing the thermos for Frankie’s inspection. Smelling of it, Frankie announced that it was the right stuff, all right, all right. Another gangster came over the bar.

And then O’Brien was upon his back on the duckboards and a dose of shrinko was being forcibly administered. He gagged and choked and swore, but it went on down just the same.

“There,” said one of the men in a satisfied voice. “Now shrink, damn you.”

He put the cap back on the bottle and the bottle on the bar, mentally listing a number of persons who might benefit from a dose.

The first thing O’Brien noticed was the looseness of his clothes. He instinctively reached for his belt to tighten it, but he knew it would do no permanent good.

“Come on in the office, all of you,” said the gangster lieutenant. He prodded the three customers and O’Brien ahead of him. O’Brien tripped over his drooping pants. As he reached the office door he fell sprawling. A gangster booted him and he slid across the floor, leaving most of his clothes behind him. The remaining garments fell off when he struggled to his feet. The walls and ceiling were receding. The men and the furniture were both receding and growing to terrifying size.

He was shivering with cold, though the late-May air was warm. And he felt marvelously light. He jumped up, feeling as active as a terrier despite his paunch. He was sure he could jump to twice his own height.

“Watch the door, Vic,” said the head gangster. His voice sounded to O’Brien like a cavernous rumble. One of his companions opened the door a little and stood with his face near the crack. The head gangster put down Guanella, who was now O’Brien’s own size. Guanella had a weapon that looked to O’Brien like an enormous battle-ax, until he realized that it consisted of an unshaped pencil split lengthwise, with a razor blade inserted in the cleft, and the whole tied fast with string. Guanella swung his ponderous-looking weapon as if it were a feather.

The head gangster said, “Frankie couldn’t pull a trigger no more, so he figured this out all by himself. He’s smott.”

Guanella advanced across the floor toward O’Brien. He was smiling, and there was death in his sparkling black eyes. No weapon had been produced for O’Brien, but then he did not really expect one. This was a gangster’s idea of a sporting chance.

Guanella leaped forward and swung. The razor-ax went swish, but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions. Guanella rushed again with an overhead swing. O’Brien jumped to one side like a large pink cricket. Guanella swung across. O’Brien, with a mighty leap, sailed clear over Guanella’s head. He fell when he landed, but bounced to his feet without appreciable effort.

The razor-ax went swish, but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions.

Around they went. O’Brien, despite his chill, did not feel at all tired, though a corresponding amount of exercise would have laid him up if he had been his normal size. The laughter of the men thundered through the room. O’Brien thought unhappily that as soon as they became bored with this spectacle they would tie a weight to him to make him easier game for their man.

Then a reflection caught his eye. It was a silvery spike lying in a crack of the floor. He snatched it up. It was an ordinary pin, not at all sharp, to his vision, but it would do for a dagger.

Guanella approached, balancing his ax. The minute he raised it, O’Brien leaped at him, stabbing. The point bounced back from Guanella’s hide, which seemed much tougher than ordinary human skin had a right to be. Down they went. Their mutual efforts buffeted O’Brien about so that he hardly knew what he was doing. But he got a glimpse of Guanella’s arm flat on the floor, the handle—the eraser end—of the ax gripped in his fist. With both hands O’Brien drove the point of his pin into the arm. It went in and through and into the wood. Guanella shouted. O’Brien caught up the ax and raced for the door.

He moved so quickly, compared to his normal ponderousness, that the gangsters were caught flat-footed. O’Brien slashed with the rear edge at the ankle of the man at the door. He saw the sock peel down, and the oozing skin after it. Vic roared and jumped, almost stepping on O’Brien, who dashed through and out.

He raced to the bar; a mighty jump took him to the top of a stool, and thence he jumped to the bar-top. He gathered the thermos bottle under his arm. It was a small thermos bottle, but it was still almost as big as he was. But he had no time to ponder on the wonders of size. There was a thunderous explosion behind him, and a bullet ripped along the bar, throwing splinters large enough to bowl him over. He hopped off onto a stool, and thence to the floor, and raced out. He zigzagged, and the shots that followed him went wide.

Outside, he yelled, “Orson!”

Orson Crow, O’Brien’s favorite hackman, looked up from his tabloid. Seeing O’Brien bearing down on him, he muttered something about seeing things, and trod on the starter.

“Wait!” shouted O’Brien. “It’s me, Obie! Let me in, quick! Quick, I say!”

He pounded on the door of the cab. Crow still did not recognize him, but at that minute a gangster with a pistol appeared at the door of the Hole in the Wall. Crow at least understood that this animated billiken was being pursued with felonious intent. So he threw open the door, almost knocking O’Brien over. O’Brien leaped in.

“McGraw-Hill building, quick!” he gasped. Crow automatically started to obey the order. As the cab roared down Eighth Avenue, O’Brien explained what he could to the bewildered driver.

“Well, now,” he said, “have you got a handkerchief?” When Crow produced one, not exactly clean, O’Brien tied it diaperwise around his middle.

When they reached the McGraw-Hill building, they did not have to ask where McLeod was. There was a huge crowd, and many firemen and policemen in evidence. Some men were trying to rig up a derrick. A searchlight on a firetruck played on the unfortunate McLeod, whose fingers clutched the twenty-first story of the building, and whose feet rested on the pavement. He had had difficulty in the matter of clothes similar to that experienced by O’Brien and Guanella, except that he had, of course, grown out of his clothes instead of shrinking out from under them. Around his waist was wound several turns of rope, and through this in front was thrust an uprooted tree, roots up.

A cop stopped the cab. “You can’t go no closer.”

“But—” said Crow.

“Gawan, I says you can’t go no closer.”

O’Brien said, “Meet me on the south side of the building, Orson. And open this damn door first.”

Crow opened the door. O’Brien scuttled out with his thermos bottle. He scurried through the darkness. The first cop did not even see him. The other persons who saw him did not have a chance to investigate, and assumed that they had suffered a brief illusion. In a few minutes he had dodged around the crowd to the front doors of the building. A fireman saw him coming, but watched him, popeyed, without trying to stop him as he raced through the front door. He kept on through the green-walled corridors until he found a stairway, and started up.

After one flight, he regretted this attempt. The treads were waist-high, and he was getting too tired to leap them, especially with his arms full of thermos bottle. He bounced around to the elevators. The night elevators were working, but the button was far above his reach.

He sat down, panting, for a while. Then he got up and wearily climbed down the whole flight of steps again. He found the night elevator on the ground floor, with the door open.

There was nothing to do but walk in, for all the risks of delay and exposure to Guanella’s friends that such a course involved. The operator did not notice his entrance, and when he spoke the man jumped a foot.

“Say,” he said, “could you take me up to the floor where the giant’s head is?”

The operator looked wildly around the cab. When he saw O’Brien he recoiled as from an angry rattlesnake.

“Well, now,” said O’Brien, “you don’t have to be scared of me. I just want to go up to give the big guy his medicine.”

“You can go up, or you can go back to hell where you came from,” said the operator. “I’m off the stuff for life, I swear!” and then he bolted.

O’Brien wondered what to do now. Then he looked over the controls. He swarmed up onto the operator’s stool, and found that he could just reach the button marked “18” with his thermos bottle. He thumped the button and pulled down on the starter handle. The elevator started up with a rush.

When it stopped, he went out and wandered around the half-lit corridors looking for the side to which McLeod clung. He was completely turned around by now. But his attention was drawn by a rushing, roaring, pulsating sound coming from one corridor. He trotted down that way.

It was all very well to be able to move more actively than you could ordinarily, but O’Brien was beginning to get tired of the enormous distances he had to cover. And the thermos bottle was beginning to weigh tons.

Euclid O’Brien soon found what was causing the racket. It was the tornado of breath going in and out of McLeod’s nose, a part of which could be seen directly in front of the window at the end of the corridor. The nose was a really alarming spectacle. It was lit up with a crisscross of lights from the street lamps and searchlights outside, and by the corridor lights inside. The pores were big enough for O’Brien to stick his thumb into. Sweat ran down it in rippling sheets.

He took a deep breath and jumped from the floor to the windowsill. He could not possibly open the window. But he took a tight grip on the thermos bottle and banged it against the glass. The glass broke.

O’Brien set the thermos bottle down on the sill, put his hands to his mouth, and yelled, “Hey, Mac!”

Nothing happened. Then O’Brien thought about his voice. He remembered that Guanella’s had gone up in pitch when Guanella had drunk the shrinko. No doubt his, O’Brien’s, voice had done likewise. But his voice sounded normal to him, whereas those of ordinary-sized men sounded much deeper. So it followed that something had happened to his hearing as well. Which, for O’Brien, was pretty good thinking.

It was reasonable to infer that both McLeod’s voice and McLeod’s hearing had gone down in pitch when McLeod had gone up in stature. So that to McLeod, O’Brien’s voice would be a batlike squeak, if indeed he could hear it at all.

O’Brien lowered his voice as much as he could and bellowed, in his equivalent of a deep bass, “Hey, Mac! It’s Obie!”

At last the nose moved, and a huge watery eye swam into O’Brien’s vision.

“Ghwhunhts?” said McLeod. At least it sounded like that to O’Brien—a deep rumbling, like that of an approaching subway train.

“Raise your voice!” shouted O’Brien. “Talk—you know—falsetto!”

“Like this?” replied McLeod. His voice was still a deep groan, but it was at least high enough to be intelligible to O’Brien, who clung to the broken edge of the glass while the blast of steamy air from McLeod’s lungs tore past him, whipping his diaper.

“Yeah! It’s Obie!”

“Who’d you say? Can’t recognize you.”

“Euclid O’Brien! I got some stuff to shrink you back with!”

“Oh, Obie! You don’t look no bigger’n a fly! Did you get shrunk, or have I growed some more?”

“Frankie Guanella’s mob shrunk me.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake do something for me! I can’t get my breath, and I’m gonna pass out with the heat, and my legs are gonna bust any minute! I can’t hold on to this building much longer!”

O’Brien waved the thermos bottle.

McLeod thundered: “Whazzat, a pill?”

“It’s a shrinko cocktail! It’ll work all right, on account of that’s what shrunk me. If I can get it open . . .” O’Brien was wrestling with the screw cap. “Here! Can you take this cap between your fingernails and hold on while I twist?”

Carefully McLeod released the grip of one of his hands on the windowsills. He groaned at the increased strain on his legs, but the overloaded bones held somehow. He put his free hand up to O’Brien’s window. O’Brien carefully inserted the cap between the nails of the thumb and forefinger.

“Now pinch, slowly,” he cried. “Not too tight. That’s enough!” He turned the flask while McLeod held the cap.

“All right now, Mac, drop the cap and take hold of the cork!” McLeod did so. O’Brien maneuvered the thermos so that its neck was braced in an angle of the hole in the glass. “Now pull, slow!” he called. The cork came out. O’Brien almost fell backwards off the sill. He clutched at the edge of the glass. It would have cut his hand if he had been larger.

“Stick your mouth up here!”

O’Brien never realized what a repulsive thing a human mouth can be until McLeod’s vast red lips came moistly pouting up at him.

“Closer!” he yelled. He poured the cocktail into the cavern. “Okay, you’ll begin to shrink in a few seconds—I hope.”

Presently he observed that McLeod’s face was actually a little lower.

“You’re shrinking!” he shouted.

The horrible mouth grinned up at him. “You got me just in time!” it roared. “I’d ’a been a dead bartender in another minute.”

“There he is!” shouted somebody behind O’Brien in the corridor. O’Brien looked around. Down toward him ran the three unshrunken gangsters.

He yelled to McLeod, “Mac! Put me on your shoulder, quick!”

McLeod reached for him. O’Brien scrambled out on the window ledge and jumped onto the outstretched palm, which transferred him to McLeod’s bare shoulder. He observed that McLeod’s fingers were bruised and bloody from the strain they had taken in contact with the windowsills. He found a small hair and clung to this. The gangsters’ faces appeared at the window a few feet above him. One of them pointed a gun out through the hole in the pane. McLeod made a snatch at the window with his free hand. The faces disappeared like magic, and O’Brien, over the roar of McLeod’s breath and the clamor in the street far below, fancied he heard the clatter of fleeing feet in the building.

“What happened?” asked McLeod, turning his head slightly and rolling his eyes in an effort to focus on the mite on his shoulder.

O’Brien explained, as the windows drifted up past him, shouting up into McLeod’s ear. As they came nearer the street, O’Brien saw hats blown off by the hurricane of McLeod’s breathing. He also saw an ambulance on the edge of the crowd. He figured the ambulance guys must have felt pretty damn silly when they saw the size of their patient.

“What you gonna do next?” asked McLeod. “Swell yourself up? I’d like to help you against Frankie’s gang, but I gotta go to the hospital. My arches are ruined if there isn’t anything else wrong with me.”

“No,” said O’Brien. “I got a better idea. Yes, sir. You just put me down when you get small enough to let go the building.”

Story by story, McLeod lowered himself as he shrank. Soon he was a mere twenty feet tall.

He said, “I can put you down now, Obie.”

“Okay,” said O’Brien. At McLeod’s sudden stooping movement, the nearest people started back. McLeod was still something pretty alarming to have around the house. O’Brien started running again. And again his small size and the uncertain light enabled him to dodge through the crowd before anybody could stop him. He tore around the corner, and then around another corner, and came to Orson Crow’s cab. He banged on the door and hopped in.

“Frankie’s mob is after me!” he gasped.

“Where you wanna go, Chief?” asked Crow, who was now fazed by few things.

“Where could a guy a foot tall buy a suit of clothes this time of night? I’m cold.”

Crow thought for a few seconds. “Some of the big drugstores carry dolls,” he said doubtfully.

“Well, now, you go round to the biggest one you can find, Orson.”

They drew up in front of a drugstore.

O’Brien said, “Now, you go in and buy me one of these dolls. And phone one of the papers to find out what pier a boat for the Far East sails from.”

“What about the dough, Obie? You owe me a buck on the meter already.”

“You collect from Mac. Tell him I’ll send it to him as soon as I get to Borneo. Yeah, and get me a banana from that stand. I’m starving.”

Crow went. O’Brien squirmed around on the seat, trying not to show himself to passing pedestrians and at the same time keeping an apprehensive eye out for Frankie’s friends.

Crow got back in and started the motor as a huge and slightly battered-looking sedan drew up. O’Brien slid to the floor, but not quickly enough. The crack of a pistol was followed by the tinkle of glass as the cab started with a furious rush.

O’Brien, on the floor, was putting on the doll’s clothes. “Where’s that boat leaving from?”

“Pier eleven, on South Street.”

“Make it snappy, Orson.”

“What does it look like I’m doing? Taking a sun bath?”

When they reached the pier, there was no sign of the gangsters. O’Brien tumbled out with his banana.

He said, “Better scram, Orson. They’ll be along. Yes, sir.”

“I’ll see that you get off foist,” said Crow. O’Brien scuttled down the pier to where the little freighter lay. Her screws had just begun to turn, and seamen were casting loose the hawsers. Crow glimpsed a small mite, barely visible in the darkness, running up a bow rope. It vanished—at least he thought it did—but just then the gangsters’ car squealed to a stop beside him. They had seen, too. They piled out and ran down to the ship. The gangplank was up, and the ship was sliding rapidly out of her berth, stern first.

One of the gangsters yelled, “Hey!” at the ship, but nobody paid any attention.

A foot-high, Frankie Guanella capered on the pier in front of the gangsters in excess of homicidal rage. He shrieked abuse at the dwindling ship. When he ran out of words for a moment, Crow, who was climbing back into his cab to make a quiet getaway, heard a faint, shrill voice raised in a tinny song from the shadows around the bow hatches.

It sang, “On the road to Mandalay-ay, where the flying fishes play-ay-ay!”

Crow was too far away to see. But Frankie Guanella saw. He saw the reduced but still-round figure of Euclid O’Brien standing on top of a hatch, holding aloft his bloody ax in one hand. Then the figure vanished into the shadows again.

Guanella gave a choked squeak, and foamed at the mouth. Before his pals could stop him, he bounded to the edge of the pier and dove off. He appeared on the surface, swimming strongly toward the SS Leeuwarden, bobbing blackly in the path of moonlight on the dirty water.

Then a triangular fin—not over a couple of inches high, but still revealing its kinship to its relatives, the sharks—cut the water. The dogfish swirled past Frankie, and there was no more midget swimmer. There was only the moonlight, and the black hull of the freighter swinging around to start on her way to Hong Kong and Singapore.

This story is included in the book If I Were You.

For more information go to www.goldenagestories.com.

Glossary

STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE reflect the words and expressions used in the 1930s and 1940s, adding unique flavor and authenticity to the tales. While a character’s speech may often reflect regional origins, it also can convey attitudes common in the day. So that readers can better grasp such cultural and historical terms, uncommon words or expressions of the era, the following glossary has been provided.

billiken: a doll created in 1908 that had elf-like pointed ears, a mischievous smile and a tuft of hair on its pointed head. It was a symbol of good luck. Named after its manufacturer, the Billiken Company of Chicago.

Borneo: the third largest island in the world, located in southeastern Asia.

bung starter: a wooden mallet used for tapping on the bung (cork or stopper) to loosen it from a barrel.

dogfish: a small bottom-dwelling shark with a long tail.

G-men: government men; agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

hackman: the driver of a hack or taxi.

hawsers: cables or ropes used in mooring or towing ships.

mite: a very small creature.

pony: a unit of measure for liquor; a glass or the amount of liquor it will hold, usually one ounce (29.6 ml).

proboscis: the elongated, protruding mouth parts of certain insects, adapted for sucking or piercing.

Scheherazade: the female narrator of The Arabian Nights, who during one thousand and one adventurous nights saved her life by entertaining her husband, the king, with stories.

square-cube law: the way to calculate how much the surface area of an object changes as you scale its size up or down. This mathematical law states that the volume of an object (the size of the three-dimensional space occupied by the object) will change by the cube of the scale, while the surface area will change by the square of the scale; i.e., if a 2" square block is made twice as big (2 x 2), the surface area of the block will be four times as big, but the volume, and therefore the weight, will be eight times as much (2 x 2 x 2). If one kept increasing the block in this way, it would eventually collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if an object’s size is halved, its structural strength (surface area) will be one-fourth of what it was, while its volume, and therefore its weight, will be only one-eighth of what it was. So, proportionally, it would be stronger.

SS: steamship.

stern: the rear end of a ship or boat.

L. Ron Hubbard in the

Golden Age of

Pulp Fiction

In writing an adventure story

a writer has to know that he is adventuring

for a lot of people who cannot.

The writer has to take them here and there

about the globe and show them

excitement and love and realism.

As long as that writer is living the part of an

adventurer when he is hammering

the keys, he is succeeding with his story.

Adventuring is a state of mind.

If you adventure through life, you have a

good chance to be a success on paper.

Adventure doesn’t mean globe-trotting,

exactly, and it doesn’t mean great deeds.

Adventuring is like art.

You have to live it to make it real.

— L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard

and American

Pulp Fiction

BORN March 13, 1911, L. Ron Hubbard lived a life at least as expansive as the stories with which he enthralled a hundred million readers through a fifty-year career.

Originally hailing from Tilden, Nebraska, he spent his formative years in a classically rugged Montana, replete with the cowpunchers, lawmen and desperadoes who would later people his Wild West adventures. And lest anyone imagine those adventures were drawn from vicarious experience, he was not only breaking broncs at a tender age, he was also among the few whites ever admitted into Blackfoot society as a bona fide blood brother. While if only to round out an otherwise rough and tumble youth, his mother was that rarity of her time—a thoroughly educated woman—who introduced her son to the classics of Occidental literature even before his seventh birthday.

But as any dedicated L. Ron Hubbard reader will attest, his world extended far beyond Montana. In point of fact, and as the son of a United States naval officer, by the age of eighteen he had traveled over a quarter of a million miles. Included therein were three Pacific crossings to a then still mysterious Asia, where he ran with the likes of Her British Majesty’s agent-in-place for North China, and the last in the line of Royal Magicians from the court of Kublai Khan. For the record, L. Ron Hubbard was also among the first Westerners to gain admittance to forbidden Tibetan monasteries below Manchuria, and his photographs of China’s Great Wall long graced American geography texts.

Upon his return to the United States and a hasty completion of his interrupted high school education, the young Ron Hubbard entered George Washington University. There, as fans of his aerial adventures may have heard, he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation. He also earned a place in free-flight record books for the longest sustained flight above Chicago. Moreover, as a roving reporter for Sportsman Pilot (featuring his first professionally penned articles), he further helped inspire a generation of pilots who would take America to world airpower.

L. Ron Hubbard, left, at Congressional Airport, Washington, DC, 1931, with members of George Washington University flying club.

Immediately beyond his sophomore year, Ron embarked on the first of his famed ethnological expeditions, initially to then untrammeled Caribbean shores (descriptions of which would later fill a whole series of West Indies mystery-thrillers). That the Puerto Rican interior would also figure into the future of Ron Hubbard stories was likewise no accident. For in addition to cultural studies of the island, a 1932–33 LRH expedition is rightly remembered as conducting the first complete mineralogical survey of a Puerto Rico under United States jurisdiction.

There was many another adventure along this vein: As a lifetime member of the famed Explorers Club, L. Ron Hubbard charted North Pacific waters with the first shipboard radio direction finder, and so pioneered a long-range navigation system universally employed until the late twentieth century. While not to put too fine an edge on it, he also held a rare Master Mariner’s license to pilot any vessel, of any tonnage in any ocean.

Capt. L. Ron Hubbard in Ketchikan, Alaska, 1940, on his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition, the first of three voyages conducted under the Explorers Club Flag.

Yet lest we stray too far afield, there is an LRH note at this juncture in his saga, and it reads in part:

“I started out writing for the pulps, writing the best I knew, writing for every mag on the stands, slanting as well as I could.”

To which one might add: His earliest submissions date from the summer of 1934, and included tales drawn from true-to-life Asian adventures, with characters roughly modeled on British/American intelligence operatives he had known in Shanghai. His early Westerns were similarly peppered with details drawn from personal experience. Although therein lay a first hard lesson from the often cruel world of the pulps. His first Westerns were soundly rejected as lacking the authenticity of a Max Brand yarn (a particularly frustrating comment given L. Ron Hubbard’s Westerns came straight from his Montana homeland, while Max Brand was a mediocre New York poet named Frederick Schiller Faust, who turned out implausible six-shooter tales from the terrace of an Italian villa).

Nevertheless, and needless to say, L. Ron Hubbard persevered and soon earned a reputation as among the most publishable names in pulp fiction, with a ninety percent placement rate of first-draft manuscripts. He was also among the most prolific, averaging between seventy and a hundred thousand words a month. Hence the rumors that L. Ron Hubbard had redesigned a typewriter for faster keyboard action and pounded out manuscripts on a continuous roll of butcher paper to save the precious seconds it took to insert a single sheet of paper into manual typewriters of the day.

L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1930, at the outset of a literary career that would finally span half a century.

That all L. Ron Hubbard stories did not run beneath said byline is yet another aspect of pulp fiction lore. That is, as publishers periodically rejected manuscripts from top-drawer authors if only to avoid paying top dollar, L. Ron Hubbard and company just as frequently replied with submissions under various pseudonyms. In Ron’s case, the list included: Rene Lafayette, Captain Charles Gordon, Lt. Scott Morgan and the notorious Kurt von Rachen—supposedly on the lam for a murder rap, while hammering out two-fisted prose in Argentina. The point: While L. Ron Hubbard as Ken Martin spun stories of Southeast Asian intrigue, LRH as Barry Randolph authored tales of romance on the Western range—which, stretching between a dozen genres is how he came to stand among the two hundred elite authors providing close to a million tales through the glory days of American Pulp Fiction.

A Man of Many Names

Between 1934 and 1950, L. Ron Hubbard authored more than fifteen million words of fiction in more than two hundred classic publications.

To supply his fans and editors with stories across an array of genres and pulp titles, he adopted fifteen pseudonyms in addition to his already renowned L. Ron Hubbard byline.

______

Winchester Remington Colt

Lt. Jonathan Daly

Capt. Charles Gordon

Capt. L. Ron Hubbard

Bernard Hubbel

Michael Keith

Rene Lafayette

Legionnaire 148

Legionnaire 14830

Ken Martin

Scott Morgan

Lt. Scott Morgan

Kurt von Rachen

Barry Randolph

Capt. Humbert Reynolds

In evidence of exactly that, by 1936 L. Ron Hubbard was literally leading pulp fiction’s elite as president of New York’s American Fiction Guild. Members included a veritable pulp hall of fame: Lester “Doc Savage” Dent, Walter “The Shadow” Gibson, and the legendary Dashiell Hammett—to cite but a few.

Also in evidence of just where L. Ron Hubbard stood within his first two years on the American pulp circuit: By the spring of 1937, he was ensconced in Hollywood, adopting a Caribbean thriller for Columbia Pictures, remembered today as The Secret of Treasure Island. Comprising fifteen thirty-minute episodes, the L. Ron Hubbard screenplay led to the most profitable matinée serial in Hollywood history. In accord with Hollywood culture, he was thereafter continually called upon to rewrite/doctor scripts—most famously for long-time friend and fellow adventurer Clark Gable.

The 1937 Secret of Treasure Island, a fifteen-episode serial adapted for the screen by L. Ron Hubbard from his novel, Murder at Pirate Castle.

In the interim—and herein lies another distinctive chapter of the L. Ron Hubbard story—he continually worked to open Pulp Kingdom gates to up-and-coming authors. Or, for that matter, anyone who wished to write. It was a fairly unconventional stance, as markets were already thin and competition razor sharp. But the fact remains, it was an L. Ron Hubbard hallmark that he vehemently lobbied on behalf of young authors—regularly supplying instructional articles to trade journals, guest-lecturing to short story classes at George Washington University and Harvard, and even founding his own creative writing competition. It was established in 1940, dubbed the Golden Pen, and guaranteed winners both New York representation and publication in Argosy.

But it was John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction that finally proved the most memorable LRH vehicle. While every fan of L. Ron Hubbard’s galactic epics undoubtedly knows the story, it nonetheless bears repeating: By late 1938, the pulp publishing magnate of Street & Smith was determined to revamp Astounding Science Fiction for broader readership. In particular, senior editorial director F. Orlin Tremaine called for stories with a stronger human element. When acting editor John W. Campbell balked, preferring his spaceship-driven tales, Tremaine enlisted Hubbard. Hubbard, in turn, replied with the genre’s first truly character-driven works, wherein heroes are pitted not against bug-eyed monsters but the mystery and majesty of deep space itself—and thus was launched the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

The names alone are enough to quicken the pulse of any science fiction aficionado, including LRH friend and protégé, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Ray Bradbury. Moreover, when coupled with LRH stories of fantasy, we further come to what’s rightly been described as the foundation of every modern tale of horror: L. Ron Hubbard’s immortal Fear. It was rightly proclaimed by Stephen King as one of the very few works to genuinely warrant that overworked term “classic”—as in: “This is a classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror. . . . This is one of the really, really good ones.”

L. Ron Hubbard, 1948, among fellow science fiction luminaries at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto.

To accommodate the greater body of L. Ron Hubbard fantasies, Street & Smith inaugurated Unknown—a classic pulp if there ever was one, and wherein readers were soon thrilling to the likes of Typewriter in the Sky and Slaves of Sleep of which Frederik Pohl would declare: “There are bits and pieces from Ron’s work that became part of the language in ways that very few other writers managed.”

And, indeed, at J. W. Campbell Jr.’s insistence, Ron was regularly drawing on themes from the Arabian Nights and so introducing readers to a world of genies, jinn, Aladdin and Sinbad—all of which, of course, continue to float through cultural mythology to this day.

At least as influential in terms of post-apocalypse stories was L. Ron Hubbard’s 1940 Final Blackout. Generally acclaimed as the finest anti-war novel of the decade and among the ten best works of the genre ever authored—here, too, was a tale that would live on in ways few other writers imagined. Hence, the later Robert Heinlein verdict: “Final Blackout is as perfect a piece of science fiction as has ever been written.”

Like many another who both lived and wrote American pulp adventure, the war proved a tragic end to Ron’s sojourn in the pulps. He served with distinction in four theaters and was highly decorated for commanding corvettes in the North Pacific. He was also grievously wounded in combat, lost many a close friend and colleague and thus resolved to say farewell to pulp fiction and devote himself to what it had supported these many years—namely, his serious research.

Portland, Oregon, 1943; L. Ron Hubbard, captain of the US Navy subchaser PC 815.

But in no way was the LRH literary saga at an end, for as he wrote some thirty years later, in 1980:

“Recently there came a period when I had little to do. This was novel in a life so crammed with busy years, and I decided to amuse myself by writing a novel that was pure science fiction.”

That work was Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000. It was an immediate New York Times bestseller and, in fact, the first international science fiction blockbuster in decades. It was not, however, L. Ron Hubbard’s magnum opus, as that distinction is generally reserved for his next and final work: The 1.2 million word Mission Earth.

How he managed those 1.2 million words in just over twelve months is yet another piece of the L. Ron Hubbard legend. But the fact remains, he did indeed author a ten-volume dekalogy that lives in publishing history for the fact that each and every volume of the series was also a New York Times bestseller.

Moreover, as subsequent generations discovered L. Ron Hubbard through republished works and novelizations of his screenplays, the mere fact of his name on a cover signaled an international bestseller. . . . Until, to date, sales of his works exceed hundreds of millions, and he otherwise remains among the most enduring and widely read authors in literary history. Although as a final word on the tales of L. Ron Hubbard, perhaps it’s enough to simply reiterate what editors told readers in the glory days of American Pulp Fiction:

He writes the way he does, brothers, because he’s been there, seen it and done it!

The Stories from the

Golden Age

Your ticket to adventure starts here with the Stories from the Golden Age collection by master storyteller L. Ron Hubbard. These gripping tales are set in a kaleidoscope of exotic locales and brim with fascinating characters, including some of the most vile villains, dangerous dames and brazen heroes you’ll ever get to meet.

The entire collection of over one hundred and fifty stories is being released in a series of eighty books and audiobooks. For an up-to-date listing of available titles, go to www.goldenagestories.com.

AIR ADVENTURE

Arctic Wings

The Battling Pilot

Boomerang Bomber

The Crate Killer

The Dive Bomber

Forbidden Gold

Hurtling Wings

The Lieutenant Takes the Sky

Man-Killers of the Air

On Blazing Wings

Red Death Over China

Sabotage in the Sky

Sky Birds Dare!

The Sky-Crasher

Trouble on His Wings

Wings Over Ethiopia

FAR-FLUNG ADVENTURE

The Adventure of “X”

All Frontiers Are Jealous

The Barbarians

The Black Sultan

Black Towers to Danger

The Bold Dare All

Buckley Plays a Hunch

The Cossack

Destiny’s Drum

Escape for Three

Fifty-Fifty O’Brien

The Headhunters

Hell’s Legionnaire

He Walked to War

Hostage to Death

Hurricane

The Iron Duke

Machine Gun 21,000

Medals for Mahoney

Price of a Hat

Red Sand

The Sky Devil

The Small Boss of Nunaloha

The Squad That Never Came Back

Starch and Stripes

Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead

Trick Soldier

While Bugles Blow!

Yukon Madness

SEA ADVENTURE

Cargo of Coffins

The Drowned City

False Cargo

Grounded

Loot of the Shanung

Mister Tidwell, Gunner

The Phantom Patrol

Sea Fangs

Submarine

Twenty Fathoms Down

Under the Black Ensign

TALES FROM THE ORIENT

The Devil—With Wings

The Falcon Killer

Five Mex for a Million

Golden Hell

The Green God

Hurricane’s Roar

Inky Odds

Orders Is Orders

Pearl Pirate

The Red Dragon

Spy Killer

Tah

The Trail of the Red Diamonds

Wind-Gone-Mad

Yellow Loot

MYSTERY

The Blow Torch Murder

Brass Keys to Murder

Calling Squad Cars!

The Carnival of Death

The Chee-Chalker

Dead Men Kill

The Death Flyer

Flame City

The Grease Spot

Killer Ape

Killer’s Law

The Mad Dog Murder

Mouthpiece

Murder Afloat

The Slickers

They Killed Him Dead

FANTASY

Borrowed Glory

The Crossroads

Danger in the Dark

The Devil’s Rescue

He Didn’t Like Cats

If I Were You

The Last Drop

The Room

The Tramp

SCIENCE FICTION

The Automagic Horse

Battle of Wizards

Battling Bolto

The Beast

Beyond All Weapons

A Can of Vacuum

The Conroy Diary

The Dangerous Dimension

Final Enemy

The Great Secret

Greed

The Invaders

A Matter of Matter

The Obsolete Weapon

One Was Stubborn

The Planet Makers

The Professor Was a Thief

The Slaver

Space Can

Strain

Tough Old Man

240,000 Miles Straight Up

When Shadows Fall

WESTERN

The Baron of Coyote River

Blood on His Spurs

Boss of the Lazy B

Branded Outlaw

Cattle King for a Day

Come and Get It

Death Waits at Sundown

Devil’s Manhunt

The Ghost Town Gun-Ghost

Gun Boss of Tumbleweed

Gunman!

Gunman’s Tally

The Gunner from Gehenna

Hoss Tamer

Johnny, the Town Tamer

King of the Gunmen

The Magic Quirt

Man for Breakfast

The No-Gun Gunhawk

The No-Gun Man

The Ranch That No One Would Buy

Reign of the Gila Monster

Ride ’Em, Cowboy

Ruin at Rio Piedras

Shadows from Boot Hill

Silent Pards

Six-Gun Caballero

Stacked Bullets

Stranger in Town

Tinhorn’s Daughter

The Toughest Ranger

Under the Diehard Brand

Vengeance Is Mine!

When Gilhooly Was in Flower

Your Next Ticket to Adventure

Explore Enticing and

Magical Worlds!

Circus dwarf Little Tom Little is the king of midgets, loved by crowds and carnival folk alike. Only he doesn't just want to be a bigger circus star, he wants to be just like the circus’ tall and imposing leader.

Trouble begins the moment that a set of ancient books containing the secret of switching bodies finds its way in Tom Little’s tiny hands. When he magically trades his small frame with that of the circus chief, he finds himself in a giant-sized heap of trouble—his craving for height has landed him smack in the center ring surrounded by forty savage cats!

Get

If I Were You

Includes the fantasy tale

The Last Drop

PAPERBACK OR AUDIOBOOK: $9.95 EACH

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JOIN THE PULP REVIVAL

America in the 1930s and 40s

Pulp fiction was in its heyday and 30 million readers were regularly riveted by the larger than life tales of master storyteller L. Ron Hubbard. For this was pulp fiction’s golden age, when the writing was raw and every page packed a walloping punch.

That magic can now be yours. An evocative world of nefarious villains, exotic intrigues, courageous heroes and heroines—a world that today’s cinema has barely tapped for tales of adventure and swashbucklers.

Enroll today in the Stories from the Golden Age Club and begin receiving your monthly feature edition selected from more than 150 stories in the collection.

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