Flight of the Silver Eagle E-Book

Arthur Leo Zagat

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 40

Beschreibung

Flight of the Silver Eagle

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

FLIGHT OF THE SILVER EAGLE, by Arthur Leo Zagat

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION, by John Betancourt

CHAPTER1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

FLIGHT OF THE SILVER EAGLE,by Arthur Leo Zagat

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1937, renewed 1965 by Popular Library, Inc.

Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April, 1937,

Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION, by John Betancourt

Arthur Leo Zagat (1896-1949) was one of the more talented authors publishing during the Golden Age of science fiction. His writing was always smooth and crisp, with well-drawn characters and none of the clunky, old-fashioned prose that characterized the work of many genre authors in those days.

Although Zagat wrote a substantial body of science fiction (some in collaboration with Nat Schachner), he was truly a general pulp author, and he published more than 500 stories in many genres, including horror, mystery and crime, weird menace, and series hero stories (his heroes were Doc Turner and Red Finder). His work appeared in mainstream markets like Argosy alongside genre stories in Astounding, Dime Mystery, The Spider, Operator 5, and even the sexy “adult” pulps, such as Spicy Mystery Stories. He published much excellent science fiction in Argosy in the late 1930s and into the 1940s, including the “Tomorrow” series, set in a near-future, post-holocaust United States.

Zagat was born in New York, went to school at City College, and served in the U.S. military in Europe during World War I. After the war, he studied at Bordeaux University, then graduated from Fordham Law School. He taught writing at New York University.

In 1941, he was elected to the first national executive committee for the Authors League pulp writers’ section. During World War II, he held an executive position in the Office of War Information. After that war, Zagat was active in organizing writers' workshops and other assistance for hospitalized veterans.

Zagat was married to Ruth Zagat; the couple had one daughter, Hermine, from whom I purchased his copyrights a few years ago. He died of a heart attack on April 3, 1949, at his home in the Bronx at the age 53. Had he lived another 20 years and transitioned into paperback books, as many of his contemporaries did, the whole history of the science fiction field might have added his name to the list of greats.

CHAPTER1

The Empty Stratocar

Against a sky glorious with flung streamers of scarlet and purple, New York’s leaping towers and arching aerial streetways traced a prismatic arabesque epitomizing the wonder and the beauty of the Twenty-first Century. But Don Atkins, his lithe, compact body poised on big-thewed legs widespread and firmly planted, was as oblivious to that far-off glory as to the bustle of the Federal Skyport all about him.

He stood beneath the high loom of the landing trap, squinting into the west out of slitted eyes from whose corners weather wrinkles rayed threadlike, and he was conscious of only two things.

Under the yellow silk of his airman’s tunic a small, hard lump was cold against his breast. It was the talisman of the Silver Eagle, the throbbing pulse in his temples reminded him, symbol of the gallant fellowship into whose fold he had been inducted at last. The secret that for months had lain prickling between him and his one close friend, Bart Thomas, was a secret no longer. Bart himself, darting from the distant Pacific, would be here in minutes now to receive from him the twisting handgrip of the order. In minutes—in seconds—now—

A siren howled across the field. A black speck notched the low sun’s upper rim. “On time to the dot!” Atkins exclaimed. A white blur in the air was suddenly a silver, tear-drop shape caught in the high-reaching fingers of the landing trap’s gaunt girders, a thousand feet above him. The gigantic beam surged down, pivoting on its huge hinge, perilously fast at first, then more and more slowly as its hydraulic shock-absorbers sapped the stratocar’s incredible momentum.

Atkins dashed for the spot where the duraluminum-skinned, man-carrying projectile would ground to end Thomas’ half-hour flight from ‘Frisco Skyport.

A knot of brown-garbed mechanics clotted around the tiny car. Their wrenches clanged against the bolt-heads that had clamped tight the hatch cover against the airlessness of upper space. Twirling metal rasped against metal. The shining oval door swung back. With eager impatience Atkins shoved past the mechanics, thrust head and shoulders into the aperture.

“Happy landing, old sock,” he shouted. “Welcome to—”