The Project Gutenberg EBook of Operation Haystack, by Frank Patrick Herbert

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Title: Operation Haystack

Author: Frank Patrick Herbert

Illustrator: van Dongen

Release Date: March 1, 2008 [EBook #24721]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPERATION HAYSTACK ***

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Transcriber's Note:

This eBook was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ May 1959, pp.
92-111. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration]

OPERATION HAYSTACK

BY FRANK HERBERT

Illustrated by van Dongen

_It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be
even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem
Orne had was one step tougher than that!_

When the Investigation & Adjustment scout cruiser landed on Marak it
carried a man the doctors had no hope of saving. He was alive only
because he was in a womblike creche pod that had taken over most of his
vital functions.

The man's name was Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled
redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy
planet native. Even in the placid repose of near death there was
something clownish about his appearance. His burned, ungent-covered face
looked made up for some bizarre show.

Marak is the League capital, and the I-A medical center there is
probably the best in the galaxy, but it accepted the creche pod and Orne
more as a curiosity than anything else. The man had lost one eye, three
fingers of his left hand and part of his hair, suffered a broken jaw and
various internal injuries. He had been in terminal shock for more than
ninety hours.

Umbo Stetson, Orne's section chief, went back into his cruiser's
"office" after a hospital flitter took pod and patient. There was an
added droop to Stetson's shoulders that accentuated his usual slouching
stance. His overlarge features were drawn into ridges of sorrow. A
general straggling, trampish look about him was not helped by p