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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Wonder Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
In No Escape from Destiny, Arthur Leo Zagat plunges readers into a world where fate cannot be outrun. When a man stumbles upon an ancient prophecy that foretells his doom, he finds himself ensnared in a web of unavoidable events. As he races against time, trying to alter his grim fate, he encounters dark forces, mysterious allies, and eerie warnings that make him question whether destiny is set in stone. Packed with suspense, twists, and a looming sense of dread, this thrilling tale is perfect for readers who enjoy stories where the line between free will and fate is dangerously blurred.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
No Escape from Destiny
No Escape from Destiny
I. — NEW PROJECTOR
II. — INDUSTRIAL GIANT
III. — DEATH FROM A SHADOW
IV. — NINE-FOLD KILLING
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
No Escape from Destiny
No Escape from Destiny
It took a crackpot genius like Parker to appear in a room that be could not enter—and then prove he was not there!
I. — NEW PROJECTOR
THE room was like a tomb. There were only the gray walls, the gray floor and ceiling.
There was only the rasp of my irate breathing as I stood with my back against the locked door, waiting for something unguessable to happen.
The melodramatic mystery with which Malvin Parker surrounds his demonstration of each new invention has irritated me ever since the fall midnight in 1952. This was when he locked the door of the cubbyhole we shared at Tech U., produced what seemed to be an ordinary dinner plate somewhat dirtier than the hundreds we washed every day in the Commons' steamy kitchen and with no other tool but his fingernails, stripped a thin film from it to display it clean and sparkling as if it had just come from the tubs.
That was the first piece ever made of the laminated tableware that has emancipated the world's housewives from the postprandial sink. On that plate, and a hundred-odd other products of Parker's fecund brain, were founded the vast Loring Enterprises and my own not inconsiderable fortune. The best piece of business I've ever done was to sign him up, that very night, to the contract by which I engaged to support him and his dependents for fife in exchange for a blanket assignment of all his past and future patents.
Best for Dr. Malvin Parker as well as for me. Were it not for Billingsley Loring's genius at industrial promotion, Parker would be just another crackpot inventor wearing out chairs in one office anteroom after another.
Yes, for well over a quarter-century I've found it profitable to humor his whims and so when he challenged me to make it impossible for anyone to enter this room in his laboratory-dwelling, I proceeded to do so without asking the questions I knew he'd refuse to answer.
There were no windows, of course, and the ventilating outlets were screened with fine wire mesh welded in place. I had my men strip the chamber to its structural plasticrete and spray all its surfaces with transparent Loring Instant-Dry Quikenam. The single door was fitted with another of Parker's devices, a phonolock which I myself set to a keyword I confided to no one. It opened inward, moreover, so that with my back planted against it, no one could enter without pushing me aside.
In the harsh glare of the cold-light strip edging the ceiling, the uniform grayness robbed the room of shape and dimension. It was an illimitable, terrifying vastness. It closed in on me so tightly I could not move, could scarcely breathe. If only there were some detail; even only a shadow for my eyes to seize upon. If only there were some sound—
There was sound, a sourceless drone barely audible. There was a shadow; the shadow of a shadow so tenuous I could not make out if it was right on top of me, on the opposite wall or in between.
Malvin Parker stood in the center of the room! He couldn't possibly have gotten in here. He was here, undeniably, his great grizzled head hunched forward on the habitually bowed shoulders of his bearlike hulk, a triumphant smile flickering in the deep-sunk dark pools of his eyes. He—The answer came to me. "Oh, no, Mal Parker. You can't fool with a tri-dimensional video image of yourself."
"I suppose not," his projected voice sighed but on his pictured face that smile of his deepened. "I wouldn't try."
The apparition stepped forward, grabbed my forearm with gnarled and very tangible fingers.
"Does that feel like a video image?"
"Urggh!" I jerked loose, butted him with my shoulder, so hard that despite his greater height and weight he staggered side-ward. My throat clamped as I goggled at a brown flurry of lab coat, at a leg and foot—
The rest of Malvin Parker had vanished!
He at once reappeared, looking a little scared.
"You shouldn't have done that, Billiken." That nickname, underlying my shortness and rotundity, was like it slap in my face and he knew it. "You might have electrocuted me."
"Electrocuted! With what? There's nothing but empty space here."
"Right, Billiken. But there are plenty of bare high voltage leads where I am."
