Spy Killer (Stories from the Golden Age) Read online

  Spy Killer

  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.

  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.

  Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. Story Preview illustration and Story Preview cover art are from Argosy and Detective Fiction Weekly © 1936, 1937 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-646-0 Mobipocket version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-617-0 ebook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-302-5 print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-166-3 audiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927545

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  SPY KILLER

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  STORY PREVIEW:

  ORDERS IS ORDERS

  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 bes
t 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!

  Spy Killer

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dangerous Woman

  THE water was black and the swim was long, but when a man is faced with death he does not consider odds.

  Kurt Reid went over the side of the tanker Rangoon in a clean dive, cleaving the swirling dark surface of the Huangpu. The strong current swept him downriver toward the gaily lighted Bund. He did not want to go there. He knew that authorities would be after him like baying hounds before the night was out.

  A shadow came between his half-immersed head and the glow. A sampan was sailing quietly through the gloom, its sculling oar stirring the thick black river.

  Kurt Reid gripped the gunwale and slid himself over to the deck. The boatman stared at him with shuddering terror. Was this some devil come to life from the stream’s depths?

  “Ai! Ai!”

  Kurt Reid was not too tired to grin. He stood up, water cascading from his black clothes.

  “Put me ashore in the native city,” he ordered in the Shanghai dialect.

  “Ai . . . ai . . .”

  “And chop-chop,” added Kurt.

  The boatman shriveled up over his oar. His eyes were two saucers of white porcelain, even his coolie coat sagged. He put the small craft about and drove it swiftly in toward the bank.

  Kurt Reid grinned back at the looming hulk of the Rangoon. He raised his hand in a mock salute and muttered, “Get me if you can, gentlemen.” He turned then and faced the nearing shore.

  As he wrung the water from his clothes he discarded his memories one by one. As mate of the Rangoon, he had been known as a bucko sailor, a hard case who struck first and questioned afterward, renowned for a temper as hot and swift as a glowing rapier.

  And the reputation had not helped him when the captain had been found dead in his cabin and when it was discovered that the safe was open and empty. Kurt Reid had been the last man to see the captain alive, so they thought.

  Shanghai stretched before him, and behind it lay all of China. If he could not escape there, he thought, he deserved to die. His only regret now was the lack of money he had been accused of stealing. A man does not go far on a few American dollars.

  But, unlike most American mates, Kurt Reid had been raised in the Orient and he knew the yellow countries and their languages. Although his quick temper had earned his many enemies among the Japanese and Chinese, he hoped to avoid them. By now several men would be advised of his arrest and before morning his escape would also be known. Many men would think that excellent news and hope that his apprehension would be speedy.

  If necessary he could assume one disguise or another. His eyes were the color of midnight and his hair was even blacker, and the pallor of his face could be easily made saffron.

  The sampan rasped against a float and Kurt Reid, throwing a coin to the boatman, stepped ashore into the din of the native city.

  Rickshaws clanged, vendors yowled their wares, jugglers threw tops high into the air and made them scream. Silk gowns rubbed against cotton gowns, scabby slippers stubbed over jeweled shoes. The crowds in the curving streets blended into the democracy of China.

  Kurt Reid, head and shoulders above the rest, shoved his way toward a tea house. There, he supposed, he could dry his clothing and get himself a drink or two. Confidently he picked his way, looking neither to the right or the left, paying little heed to those who stopped to stare at this black-clothed giant who left the cobblestones spotted with his dripping passage.

  The tea house was set a little apart from the other structures which hung flimsily over the street. The tea house had curving corners to foil the devils and a floating banner or two in red letters and a whole row of paper lanterns.

  Kurt entered and rolled back the clouds of blue smoke which hung between ceiling and floor. Black caps bobbed, gowns rustled. Tea cups remained suspended for seconds.

  Kurt went to the back of the room and found the round-faced, slit-eyed proprietor. “I want to dry my clothes. I fell into the river.”

  The man opened up a small cubicle at the rear, clapped his hands sharply, and presently a charcoal brazier was placed on the floor.

  Kurt shut the door and disrobed, hanging his black flannel shirt and his bell-bottom pants over a bench to dry. Tea was brought, but he waved it aside in favor of hot rice wine.

  The clothes began to steam and the rice wine took the chill from his body.

  All unsuspecting and feeling at ease, Kurt began to plan ways and means of getting into the interior and away from possible arrest.

  If he could buy a gown from this Chinese and perhaps a few other things, everything would be all right. He could join some party of merchants and get away.

  But his plans were for nothing. His clothing was soon dry and he dressed again, feeling cheered and optimistic. He clapped his hands for the proprietor, and when that worthy came, Kurt was startled by a woman who sat with her back to the wall, staring out into the milling street.

  Kurt slipped a dollar bill into the proprietor’s hand. He still studied the woman. She was obviously a Russian. Her face was flat, with high cheekbones, and her nostrils were broad. There was the slightest hint of a slant to her eyes. She wore a coat made of expensive fur, and a small fur hat sat rakishly on the side of her blonde head. It was not usual to find Russian women alone in the native city, especially Russian women who dressed so well.

  “Who is that?” demanded Kurt.

  The Chinese inspected the girl as though he were seeing her for the first time. “Name Varinka Savischna,” he replied, stumbling over the unfamiliar vowels of the Russian name.

  “But . . . a white woman in the native city . . .” said Kurt.

  “Russian woman,” grumbled the Chinese. “She brings trouble to me.” He looked at Kurt’s lean body and handsome, inquisitive face and then grinned.

  As though the thoughts of the two men were projected to her, Varinka Savischna turned slowly in her chair, placed her arm idly against the table and tapped the toe of a fur-topped boot against the rough floor. The steam which rose from her cup of tea was not less illusive than the quality of her eyes. Casually, impersonally, she inspected the tall American. She drew a long cigarette from her pocket and inserted it languidly between her full, scarlet lips.

  Kurt felt the magnetic pull of her personality, and he caught an uneasiness she did not display. She was signaling him somehow. He picked up a packet of Chinese matches from a table and went slowly toward her. Without a word he lighted her cigarette.

  She touched a chair leg with her boot. “Sit down, American.”

  Kurt sat down. He had two th
oughts in mind. This girl appeared rich and she might be in trouble. If he could perform some small service for her, he might gain materially as well appease the taste for chivalry which bubbled up inside him.

  Varinka looked quickly about her and then leaned across the table, staring intently at him through the steam which flowed upward from her cup.

  “You do not belong here, American.”

  “No, and neither do you,” said Kurt.

  “My messenger is late. Perhaps you have a moment’s time to do a small favor for Varinka, eh?”

  “Perhaps,” said Kurt.

  “This is a very important matter, American. If I can trust you to take a letter to— But then, how do I know that I can give you my confidence, eh?”

  “Look at me and find out,” said Kurt.

  She drew a small envelope from her pocket and slid it face-down across the board to him. “I cannot take this myself. I have been waiting here for one who could, but my messenger did not come, and if they have caught him then perhaps you had better not stay with me too long. You understand, American? Tell this man that you have been of slight service to Varinka, and he will reward you.”

  “If you’re liable to be caught,” said Kurt, “let’s get out of here.”

  “No, there is too much—” She broke off with a startled gasp. Her eyes flew wide as she looked at the door.

  Kurt spun in his chair. Two men were there at the entrance, looking over the room. They were both Chinese from the North, tall and bony-faced. They wore black suits which had a suggestion of a uniform. Their hands were thrust deep into their pockets, as though they held hidden guns.

  The pair saw Varinka and their glance steadied on her. They came slowly through the crowded room. The Chinese, knowing what to expect, dived sideways out of the line of fire. Kurt was rising slowly from his chair.