Hurricane (Stories From the Golden Age) Read online

  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

  © 2007 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 and story preview

  cover art from Top Notch Magazineis © 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.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN- 1-59212-574-3 ePub version

  ISBN- 1-59212-284-1 print version

  ISBN- 1-59212-292-2 audiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903533

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  HURRICANE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  STORY PREVIEW:

  HELL'S LEGIONNAIRE

  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 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!

  Hurricane

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Convict

  HE came through the rain-buffeted darkness, slipping silently along a wall, avoiding the triangular patches of light. His stealth was second nature because he had lived with stealth so long. And who knew but what death walked with him into the leaden gusts which swept through the streets of Fort-de-France, Martinique?

  He was big, heavy boned, and he had once weighed more than he did. His eyes were silver gray, almost luminous in the night like a wolf’s. His black hair was plastered down on his forehead, his shirt was dark, soggy with the tempest, and at his waist there gleamed a giant brass buckle. Capless and gaunt, feeling his way through the sullen city, he heard voices issuing from behind a door.

  He stopped and then, indecisively, studied the entrance. Finally he rapped. A moment later a dark, fat face appeared in the lighted crack.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “I want food. Food and perhaps information.”

  “The police have forbidden us to open so late. Do you wish to cause my arrest?”

  “I have money.”

  The doors opened wider. The mestizo closed and bolted the double door. A half a dozen men looked up, curiously, and then returned to their rum punch.

  “Your name is Henri,” said the tall one, standing in a puddle of water which oozed out away from his shoes.

  Henri raised his brows and rubbed his hands, looking up and down the tall one’s height. “You know my name? And I know you. You are the one they call Captain Spar.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Then you got the letter?”

  “Yes, I received the letter. I do not often associate with . . . convicts.”

  Captain Spar made no move. “I have money.”

  “How much?”

  “One hundred dollars.”

  Henri waved his fat hands. “It is not enough. There are police!”

  “I have one hundred dollars, that’s all.”

  “I expose no risk for a hundred dollars. Am I a fool? Go quickly before I call the gendarmes.”

  “I’ll attend to getting out of here by myself. I want only food, perhaps some clothes.”

  Henri subsided. “But how did you come here?”

  “Stowaway. The captain found me, allowed me to get ashore here, would carry me no further. Our friend wrote you in case that happened.”

  “He did not say that you would only have a hundred dollars. Let me tell you, young fellow, an American is conspicuous here on a black island. I run no risks for a paltry hundred dollars. If you are caught, you will be sent back and I will be sent with you. I disclaim any interest in you or knowledge of you. If you want food, I will serve it to you as a customer. That is all.”

  Henri waddled away, his neck sticking like a stump out of his collarless white-and-blue striped, sweat-stained shirt. Henri was greasy to a fault, thought Captain Spar. Slippery, in fact.

  Presently Henri came back, bringing the makings of a rum punch—syrup, rhum vieux, limes and a bowl of cracked ice. Captain Spar made his own drink and as he sipped it, he said, “Would you know of a man here who calls himself the Saint?”

  Henri shook his head. “Who is that? Can it be that you actually came back into French territory, risking your neck, to find a man?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps for some of that hundred—”

  “If your information is right, you get paid.”

  “Tell me what you know of this man, first. Tell me why you want him.”

  Captain Spar looked over the glass rim and then nodded. “All right. You know my name. That’s my right name, strangely enough. One time, not five years ago, it was a very respected thing, but now . . .

  “Five years ago I was in Paramaribo, temporarily out of a job. I was approached by a ship’s broker who said that a man who called himself the Saint was in need of a captain. I had not heard of the Saint, but it was said that his headquarters were Martinique.

  “The job was simple enough. I was to sail for New York in command of a two-thousand-ton tub of rust. The loading had already been done, so they said. All I had to do was get aboard and shove off.

  “Just as I was about to sail, men swarmed down upon the ship, boarded us, announced that they were police, and began to search. In a few minutes they had dragged a dozen men from the hold. They turned all of us over to the French authorities who immediately sent us down to French Guiana.

  “I was accused of trying to aid penal colony convicts to escape, and with a somewhat rare humor, they determined that I should join the men they thought my comrades at their labor in the swamps.

  “That was five years ago. Two weeks ago I made my way to the sea, found this friend of mine, recovered the money he had been keeping for me, stowed on a freighter, and here I am in Martinique. I want the Saint.”

  Henri nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, there is a Saint here.”

  Captain Spar sat forward, his sunken eyes lighting up with a swift ferocity. “Here? Where?”

  “I can tell you all about it,” said Henri, “but I do not want money for my efforts. Oh, no, m’sieu. You can do me a small favor, and then perhaps I shall tell you all about the Saint, where he can be found, how you can kill him.”

  “Name the favor,” said Spar.

  “Two blocks down, on the left of the governor’s house, you will find a small café. Go there tonight, now. Wait there in a room at the back. Soon there will be men asking for you. Give them a package I have made ready. That is all.”

  “Sounds easy,” said Spar, thinking of nothing but the Saint. “Where is the package?”

  Henri went out and returned presently with a small, light box. Spar put it in his shirt, eased through the door and went down the shining wet streets, keeping close to the walls.

  His thoughts were not very nice. For five years he had cherished them, nursed them, lived with them, until now he was living for only one thing. He wanted to get the man who had sent him there. Wanted the pleasure of feeling that man die between his hands.

  It was not a nice thought. But in the penal camps of French Guiana, neither are things nice. The fever, the labor, the privation, all leave a bitter stamp. Swollen jungle rivers, back-and-heart-breaking labor. Sun and storm. And fever. And guards. And the association of damned men to drive one who has been civilized to the verge of insanity.

  Once Spar had been a merchant captain of steady reputation, but all that had faded from him now. He stalked like a black panther through the rain, merging with the shadows, on the lookout for the shine of a badge, dreading recapture only because it would mean forswearing the vengeance
he hoped to wreak on the Saint.

  He found the small tavern without any difficulty. It stood drearily in the blackness, flush with the street, overshadowed by a balcony. Standing beside the open gutter which ran torrents, Spar regarded the structure, wondering whether or not he was walking into a trap. But trap or no, if it led to one who called himself the Saint, Spar was ready for it.

  He went in, cautiously. A big man in a white apron seemed to be expecting him. Without a word, Spar was led over the rough boards back through the taproom and into a small, isolated cubbyhole beyond.

  The place had the unfinished appearance of a piano box. Only one chair was there, and the back of that was toward the door.

  Spar turned it around and sat with his back to the wall. One could never be too sure.

  He did not sit at ease. He twisted about nervously, his fever-yellowed face forever turning from one to the other of the two doors. He started at small sounds. In the outer room, a mechanical piano was banging away with all its brass-gutted abandon. It was the first semblance of music Spar had heard in five years.

  He became more jumpy as the time went on. And then he was suddenly calm. The presence of danger acted like a bromide upon him. The door had moved an eighth of an inch. No more. A gust of heavily odorous air whispered through the crack, making a low moaning sound.

  An instant later the other door moved. No one came in sight. The wind moaned more loudly, dismally. The mechanical piano was still. The wash of the rain across the sheet-iron roof was heavy and dull at times, and then again would resemble the scampering of a thousand rat feet.

  The tension became stiff. Slowly, Spar climbed to his feet and stood, leaning a little forward, waiting. He knew as well as though a voice had shouted that he was about to be killed.

  Perhaps the Saint had already learned of his presence. Perhaps the Saint was striking first. Little by little the left-hand door swung back. All was darkness beyond it. The only light came from a feeble bulb in the ceiling of the unfinished room. Water roared down the eaves and the wind moaned again.