The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hell Ship, by Raymond Alfred Palmer

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Title: The Hell Ship

Author: Raymond Alfred Palmer

Release Date: May 31, 2010 [EBook #32615]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The HELL SHIP

By Ray Palmer

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _The passengers rocketed through space in luxury. But they
never went below decks because rumor had it that Satan himself manned
the controls of The Hell Ship._]

The giant space liner swung down in a long arc, hung for an instant on
columns of flame, then settled slowly into the blast-pit. But no hatch
opened; no air lock swung out; no person left the ship. It lay there,
its voyage over, waiting.

The thing at the controls had great corded man-like arms. Its skin was
black with stiff fur. It had fingers ending in heavy talons and eyes
bulging from the base of a massive skull. Its body was ponderous, heavy,
inhuman.

[Illustration]

After twenty minutes, a single air lock swung clear and a dozen armed
men in Company uniforms went aboard. Still later, a truck lumbered up,
the cargo hatch creaked aside, and a crane reached its long neck in for
the cargo.

Still no creature from the ship was seen to emerge. The truck driver,
idly smoking near the hull, knew this was the _Prescott_, in from the
Jupiter run--that this was the White Sands Space Port. But he didn't
know what was inside the _Prescott_ and he'd been told it wasn't healthy
to ask.

Gene O'Neil stood outside the electrified wire that surrounded the White
Sands port and thought of many things. He thought of the eternal secrecy
surrounding space travel; of the reinforced hush-hush enshrouding
Company ships. No one ever visited the engine rooms. No one in all the
nation had ever talked with a spaceman. Gene tho