If I Were You (Stories from the Golden Age) Read online

  If I Were You

  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 from Argosy Magazine and The Last Drop story illustration from Astonishing Stories and are © 1936, 1941 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc. Story Preview cover art; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations; and Story Preview and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-648-4 Mobipocket version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-576-0 ebook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-359-9 print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-290-5 audiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927523

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  IF I WERE YOU

  THE LAST DROP

  STORY PREVIEW:

  DANGER IN THE DARK

  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 th
e 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!

  If I Were You

  If I Were You

  FITTINGLY, it was a dark and blustery night when the Professor died. The summer storm had come yelling in from a scorching afternoon to tear at canvas and yank out stakes and stab bright fury at the big top. The rain bucketed down with a shock of coldness and then settled to a ceaseless cannonading which, after seven hours, had turned the lot into a swamp so tenacious that not even the rubber mules could budge the wagons. Banners wept from their staffs; lot lice shivered in scant cover; somewhere a big cat, excited by the tropical aspect of the storm, moaned and paced in his cage.

  And although a waxen yellowness was already upon his face and his skin was falling away from his bones, the Professor managed an evil smile. He was waiting, hanging on and waiting. For he had sent half an hour since for Little Tom Little, king of the midgets. And as he waited, his thoughts roamed over the past, the better to savor what he was about to do.

  The Professor was the gypsy camp’s bird of bad omen. Whence he had come, no man knew, but with him had come a chain of disaster. Tall and bony, he had always been more a cadaver than a man; his scummed eyes hid behind thick, dark lids; his hands seemed always ready to throttle a victim; his black hair was matted about his face, just as his clothes were matted about his form.

  He had come as a mitt reader. Mrs. Johnson had not wanted to take him but, boss of the show though she was, she had not been able to refuse him. Hermann Schmidt, ringmaster and governor de facto, powerful figure though he was, had been unable to resist the eerie command of those eyes. And the man had become “The Professor” to the gypsy camp, and Yogi Matto to the chumps.

  There had been uneasy speculation about him for weeks, for the breaks had been many—and all bad. But men were afraid of him and said nothing. As though finding flavor in his tidings, he had accurately forecast each and every disaster, even to this storm which had kept the crowds away tonight. And, weirdly, he had forecast, again with relish, his own death.

  Some had said he was a Russian, but then a Hindu had come out of the crowd and the two had spoken in the Hindu’s tongue. And when they had dubbed him as being from India, they found that he spoke Chinese and Turkish as well. A razorback had once seen the insides of his trunks and had pronounced their heaviness occasioned by fully a hundred books of ancient aspect, filled with mysterious signs and incantations.

  That the Professor did possess some remarkable power was apparent to all. For no matter how much anger might be vented against him for driving clients into hysteria with his evil forebodings of their future and thus hurting the show, no man had ever been able to approach those eyes.

  No man, that is, but Little Tom Little.

  Just how this was, even the Professor could not tell. But from the first, Little Tom Little, an ace at the heartless art of mimicry, had found humor in the Professor and had won laughter by mocking him. The matter had developed into nearly an open feud, but Little Tom Little, inwardly caring desperately what the world thought of him, but outwardly a swaggering satirist, had continued merrily.

  The mockery always went well with the crowd, just as the Professor did not. Little Tom Little, in the sideshow, would get the crowd after the Professor was done and, very cunningly, would tell their fortunes in a doleful voice which made the tent billow from the resulting laughter. These crowds, sensing evil, had not liked to believe what the Professor had said.

  And the gypsy camp had laughed with Little Tom Little, even though no man but he dared to affront the Professor.

  The Professor had not forgotten his powerlessness to turn aside those quips. He had not forgotten that a man just thirty inches tall had held him up to ridicule for months. He had said nothing.

  But he was dying now. And he was glad to die, secure as he was in a knowledge of the glories which awaited him elsewhere. In dying he would find himself at last. But he could not forget Little Tom Little. No! He would remember Little Tom Little with a legacy. He had already made out the paper.

  Someone was coming up the aisle of the car, and then the doorknob rattled and Little Tom Little entered the stateroom. Water ran from his tiny poncho as he took it off.

  The Professor moved a little on his pillow so that he could see his visitor, whose head was just above the height of the bunk.

  Little Tom Little’s handsome self, usually so gay, was now steeped in seriousness. He felt that he ought to feel highly sympathetic, and yet he could not understand exactly why, out of the whole crew, he had been sent for at this moment—for the physician outside had told him that the Professor could not last long. He was repelled, as always, by those filmed eyes, for Little Tom was not a brave man, for all his front. He waited for the Professor to speak.

  “You are wondering,” said the Professor, “why I have sent for you.” His voice was very low and Little Tom had to put his ear close to the evil-smelling lips. “In your mind,” said the Professor, “you are turning over the reasons for this. I must put you at ease, for I have always respected you.”

  Little Tom was startled.

  “Yes,” said the Professor, “I have seen much to admire in you. On the lot about me, men are afraid. They spread away from me when I approach. But you . . . you were brave, Tom Little. You did not cower away. You had steel enough in you not only to meet me and speak to me, but you also had courage enough to risk my wrath—a thing which all other men feared.”

  Little Tom had not considered that his mockery required so much nerve.

  “It was not courage,” he protested, trying to say something decent to a dying man. “You just imagined—”

  “No, I did not imagine. Men slink from me for a peculiar reason, Little Tom. They slink from me because I impel them. Yes, that is the truth. I force them away. I want nothing to do with men, for I loathe all mankind. I impelled them, Little Tom Little. Long before now you must have realized that I command strange and subtle arts beyond the understanding of these foolish and material slaves of their own desires.”

  Whatever Little Tom Little had expected to hear from a dying man, this certainly was far from it. In common with everyone, he had suspected these things, but he had been urged to derision instead of terror, not through understanding, but by nature.

  “By such command,” continued the Professor, “I am now able to leave this world for one far better, knowing exactly where I am going. But behind me I shall leave a little more than a corpse. I have a few things here—”

  “Oh, you’re not going to die!” said Little Tom Little.

  “If I believed that, I should be very sad,” replied the Professor. “But to return to why I brought you here; you must know th
at I was unable to make any impression upon you.”

  “Well . . . I never felt any.”

  “That is it,” said the Professor. “I cannot touch you. And that means that you have it subconsciously in your power to handle and control all phases of the black arts.”

  “Me?”

  “You. And I appreciate this. I respect you for it. I have a generous heart, Little Tom, for I am a learned man and can understand all things. Behind me I shall leave my books. They are ancient and rare, and most of them in mystic languages. But I have translated many of the passages into English. These volumes contain the black lore of the ancient peoples of the East. Only a few men have any notion whatever of the depths of such wisdom, of the power to be gained through its use. And you, Little Tom, are to be my heir. The paper here is witnessed. I give it to you.”

  Little Tom took the sheet and glanced wonderingly from it to the Professor.

  “You did not believe I was truly your friend,” said the Professor. “Now, what greater proof is there than this legacy so freely given? Does that prove my good regard, Little Tom?”

  “You did not believe I was truly your friend,” said the Professor. “Now, what greater proof is there than this legacy so freely given? Does that prove my good regard, Little Tom?”

  “Why . . . yes. Sure.”

  “When I am dead, then, add my trunks to your own baggage. Study my volumes well. Can I give you any greater gift than wisdom?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say. This . . . this is so much—”

  “Do not mention it, please. It is a little thing, for I shall need them no longer. Now go, for in the few minutes which remain to me I wish to concentrate all my powers upon the world which lies awaiting me.”