Trouble on His Wings 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

  © 2012 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: Argosy Magazine is © 1936 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-627-9 eBook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-336-0 Print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-308-7 Audiobook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-538-8 eAudiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903534

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  TROUBLE ON HIS WINGS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  STORY PREVIEW:

  THE BATTLING PILOT

  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 photograp
her, 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!

  Trouble on His Wings

  Chapter One

  JOHNNY BRICE lounged in the shade of the hangar, eyes half-shut, cigarette smoldering, forgotten in his fingers, thinking about absolutely nothing. He should have known better. Every time he had ever relaxed in his life, Fate had sent her legions scurrying and foraging for some trouble to get Johnny into; and this time was no exception.

  Running footsteps turned the end of the hangar and Johnny, with a chill of premonition, glanced up to see Irish Donnegan, his pint-size coat holder and mechanic, come tearing up in a cloud of dust and sweat. Johnny deplored such activity on a warm day.

  “Johnny!” cried Irish. “Look, Johnny! Gee gosh—!”

  “Hold the pose,” said Johnny with a sigh.

  Irish panted, swallowed and then, eyes starting from their sockets at the effort, slowed his speech. “Johnny, the Kalolo burned this morning at sea! Twenty lives lost! Ship abandoned, passengers and crew taken off by the SS Birmingham Alabama. Thrilling sea rescue, women and children—drama!”

  “You got to quit this excitement,” sighed Johnny. “It’ll get your cerebellum displaced and your liver cirrhosified!”

  “The old man is wild. He found out some of the passengers had hand movie cameras and he bought all the film aboard by radio. He’s getting out a special release and he needs that film in three hours, and the rescue craft is still two hundred miles at sea. He says you gotta get an idea. He says you gotta get that film. And you know Felznick!”

  Johnny took one last drag of his cigarette and threw the butt away. “An’ he said that I could have a month off for gettin’ those hurricane pictures. Irish, take my advice. Don’t never get efficient in the newsreel business. Here I am, my bruises hardly healed and my pay unspent and we gotta go chasing after some film two hundred miles at sea. Am I a cameraman or an errand boy? Is this a job or a hard way to commit suicide?”

  “We ain’t got much time,” panted Irish. “Gee, think of it, Johnny. The Kalolo, biggest round-the-world ship, burning to the waterline, boilers exploding, women screaming, men gettin’ burned alive! Gosh, Johnny, I bet if we’d been there we coulda made an epic, huh? I bet we coulda got some swell shots.”

  “Yeah,” said Johnny. “You sure can think of some of the damndest things.”

  “You got an idea yet? Old Felznick is on fire. Never heard him so excited. He said get right out there and check the rescued list.”

  Johnny

  Irish

  “Huh,” said Johnny with a start. “Wasn’t his wife comin’ back from Europe on that tub? What a guy! His wife may be burned up—and he thinks of special editions. Come on, fellah, I think maybe I’ve got us an idea, at that.”

  They headed around the corner and zigzagged their way through the hangar to the amphibian. It was one of three company ships, squat and sleek and powerful, its wheels sticking out of the big fuselage like short lizard’s legs. On its side was the red-and-gold insignia of the outfit, a lens emblazoned with the words, “World News, ‘The Best First.’”

  Johnny signed to a mechanic, who swiftly dollied the ship out on the tarmac with a small electric tractor. Irish eagerly slid into the rear cockpit and threw the starter switches. The big engine clanked and wheezed, and then with an angry roar blasted a dust-filled slipstream back into the hangar.

  Meantime, Johnny was struggling into a parachute. When he had fastened the webbing about his legs and shoulders, he dragged a small hand camera out of the locker and draped it around his neck by a strap. Stuffing a rubber film protector into his overalls, he started toward the amphib.

  His way was blocked by a man built of spheres, a man who looked like anything but the ace cameraman of “Mammoth Pictures, ‘All the News Always.’”

  “Goin’ places?” said Bert Goddard innocently.

  Johnny slowed down with great unconcern. “Hello, fellah. Say, I got a hot tip. There’s a big oil fire over in Jersey. Million-dollar blaze. Got to cover it right off. Ain’t you heard about it?”

  Goddard grinned complacently. “You know, Johnny, little boys that tell lies never go to heaven. It’s something in the shipping lanes, says that amphib.”

  “Why, Bert, you never heard me tell a lie in my life. Honest, it’s just an old old fire—”

  “Goddard!” bellowed a teletype man from a nearby office. “The Kalolo burned at sea!”

  “My pal,” said Goddard.

  “Well, I tried anyhow,” said Johnny. “Besides, we bought all the amateur film aboard not half an hour ago.”

  “How you goin’ to pick it up?”

  “Guess,” said Johnny, adjusting his harness and surging past.

  “Y’damned fool,” said Goddard. “Y’want to get yourself drowned?”

  “I regret that I have only one life to give to my company,” said Johnny above the clatter and clank of the engine, as he climbed in.

  “I’m going to get some air shots, anyhow,” said Goddard.

  “Take your pick,” said Johnny, grasping the controls.

  He let off the brakes and the amphib wallowed ahead, wings flashing in the Long Island sunlight. He kicked her around into the wind and lanced down the concrete track and into the air.

  Irish pulled his hood shut and clamped the radiophones to his ears, listening attentively. Finally he tapped Johnny on the shoulder. “Course ninety-three degrees, there’s a thirty-mile tailwind at two thousand.”

  “Gotcha,” said Johnny, banking into the course.

  Far behind them, the smoky towers of Manhattan gradually sank down under the horizon. Below and ahead, a steel-plated sea with a crisscross pattern of waves, small and distinct from this height, tried to appear innocent after a roaring night of it.

  Calmly Johnny scrutinized each ship in the lanes below, checking off freighters and tugs, as he tried to locate the SS Birmingham Alabama. At long last he saw a pillar of greasy smoke on the far horizon and knew that the rescue ship must be almost directly below. Then he saw it, a child’s toy on a mirror. He shook the stick and Irish took over.

  “Here’s the automatic,” said Johnny, handing back the small camera. “After you drop me, take a turn around the Kalolo out there and get some air shots of it. Then come back and put her close to the rescue ship. When you see me dive overboard, put her down and by God, I’ll break your neck if you make me swim more than a hundred yards.�
�

  “You goin’ to jump?” said the startled Irish, getting white and tongue-tied.

  “Sure.”

  “But . . . but gee whiz, Johnny, maybe the chute’ll sink you. I thought we’d land and let that rescue ship pick you off—”

  “That captain wouldn’t stop for us,” shouted Johnny above the engine’s drone. “He’ll have to pick me up if I’m in the water. It’s my only chance of getting aboard. They’ll send out a boat—I hope.”

  Irish was speechless, forgetting that he had the stick in his hands until the amphib started to come up into a stall. He leveled out hurriedly and, with fascination, watched Johnny stuff a checkbook into the rubber container and then push back the hood to stand up into the blast of air.

  Johnny, taking cautious holds, worked his way out on the wing, a hundred-and-eighty-mile-an-hour wind making his overalls thunder against him. He glanced back at Irish, who nodded. Johnny tightened up on his nerve. He always hated a jump, hated the wind in his nose, blowing upward until it felt like he’d lose the top of his head. Sea and sky were too much of a shade to be detailed. He hurtled down through a blue void, only occasionally catching sight of the rescue ship below. He felt for his heart to see if it was still beating, that being the best method of locating a rip cord, never held at the beginning of a drop, lest it pull and foul on the ship.

  The smooth sensation against the seat of his pants told him that the chute was pleasantly sliding forth. For a moment of chill he wondered who had packed it, whether it would crack open. Water split a free-falling body into chunks. Abruptly mighty hands grabbed him and tried to tear him apart, and then swung him in a long, dizzy arc, with the great white umbrella tipping slowly high above. He caught his breath, cursing the wind in his nose.

  “Hell of a life,” Johnny told a sea gull.

  He slipped the chute, to get more directly in the path of the SS Birmingham Alabama, which now began to have planks in its deck, and lettering on its lifeboats and a cloud of smoke pluming back from it. People were staring up at him in wonder.