The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond The Thunder, by H. B. Hickey

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Title: Beyond The Thunder

Author: H. B. Hickey

Release Date: June 17, 2010 [EBook #32866]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND THE THUNDER ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

BEYOND THE THUNDER

By H. B. Hickey

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December
1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: What was this blinding force that came out of a hole in the
sky, and was powerful enough to destroy an entire city? Case thought he
knew....]

Ten thousand persons in New York looked skyward at the first rumble of
sound. The flash caught them that way, seared them to cinder, liquefied
their eyeballs, brought their vitals boiling out of the fissures of
their bodies. They were the lucky ones. The rest died slowly, their
monument the rubble which had once been a city.

Of all that, Case Damon knew nothing. Rocketing up in the self-service
elevator to his new cloud-reaching apartment in San Francisco, his
thoughts were all on the girl who would be waiting for him.

"She loves me, she loves me not," he said to himself. They were orchid
petals, not those of daisies, that drifted to the floor of the car.

"She loves me." The last one touched the floor softly, and Case laughed.

Then the doors were opening and he was racing down the hall. No more
lonely nights for him, no more hours wasted thumbing through the pages
of his little black book wondering which girl to call. Case Damon,
rocket-jockey, space-explorer, was now a married man, married to the
most beautiful girl in the world.

He scooped Karin off her feet and hugged her to him. Her lips were red
velvet on his, her spun gold hair drifted around his shoulders.

"Box seats for the best show in town, honey," he gloated in her ear.

He fished around in his pockets with one hand while he held her against
him with the other. The