Stranger From Smallness E-Book

Otis Adelbert Kline

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Meet the another sci-fi story from the master of adventure and science-fiction novelist of the pulp era Otis Adelbert Kline, best known for his interplanetary adventure novels set on Venus and Mars, which instantly became science-fiction classics. Smaller than a microbe, the Stranger was but how he grew! Ralph Blake’s surprise kidnapping flung him into fierce adventure in the torrid Sahara. Then a strange creature from Mercury stepped in and even Ralph’s death couldn’t prevent him from unraveling the network of intrigue! With an exciting narrative full of thrilling action sequences, memorable characters, and a fascinating civilization of bizarre wonders, it is a great adventure novel that will thrill fans of classic science fiction.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. HAGG NADEEM

II. MYSTERIOUS HOST

III. THE STRANGER

IV. MORTAL ENEMY

V. UNMASKED

VI. SECOND WISH

VII. FIRE OF THE EYES

VIII. THE MAGICIAN

IX. THE COLONEL

X. THE FIRING SQUAD

I. HAGG NADEEM

FOR some time now, as he passed from stall to stall in the sweet-smelling Suk al Attarin, the Street of the Perfumers in the Arab quarter of Cairo, Ralph Blake, American microbe hunter, had been conscious that he was being followed. The young bacteriologist, a tall, slender, sun-bronzed chap with dark brown hair that was bleached at the temples by exposure to the sun, had received a week’s furlough from his gruelling labors. He was trying to find the cause of and cure for a mysterious malady that was decimating the native population of lower Egypt.

He had hurried through tiffin after his late arrival at Shepheard’s hotel, anxious to make the most of the brief time alloted him for diversion in the Moslem metropolis, and had decided to tour the bazaars. The afternoon and evening had passed with many of the bazaars still unexplored, and now, it was near closing time.

Observing the two who had been following him, from the corners of his eyes, he saw that one was short and slight, with a patch over one eye beneath his red tarboosh. The other was as tall as Blake himself, but fully twice as wide, and walked with a rolling gait. His rotund countenance might have been jovial, save for the ferocious aspect imparted by three livid scars, two on the left, and one on the right side of his face.

These two, it appeared, were no strangers to hand-to-hand fights, and their cloaks, no doubt, concealed curved, razor-edged jambiyehs.

What could be their motive in following him? Robbery? Assassination? That might be it. He had a particularly bitter enemy–Hans Friedl of Vienna–not only jealous of his fame, but filled with undying hatred because Blake had once exposed a ridiculous error he had made.

Twice before, Blake’s life had been attempted by obviously paid assassins, once in China and once in New Guinea, and both times he had suspected Friedl. But he had been unable to prove anything because he had been compelled to kill his attackers in order to save his own life.

He began to wish that he had brought his favorite weapon–a Colt forty-five. But, as it still reposed in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe trunk, he could only rely on nature’s weapons.

He could, of course, call a policeman. But he had not been attacked, and could not even prove that he was being followed. Besides, every native policeman now seemed suddenly and mysteriously to have disappeared. There were only a few straggling shopkeepers and their employees about.

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*

Keeping close to the nearest of these, Blake, with an effort to appear nonchalant, followed them out of the Suk al Attarin, and turned right on the Sukten Nahhasi. He kept a wary eye on the two villainous looking cutthroats who were following him. It was during one of his quick glances backward that the group he had taken to be harmless shopkeepers suddenly jumped on him. A cloak was thrown over his head, and he was borne to the ground by the sheer weight of numbers.

Blake instantly lashed out from the ground with fists and feet, flinging them in all directions, then tore the stifling folds of the cloak from his head and leaped erect. They were on him again in an instant, like a pack of wolves around a stag, and he saw that the monocular and the scar-faced ruffian who had been following him, had joined them–were apparently the ringleaders. He clipped the former on the jaw, sending him reeling against a wall, then punched the latter in the belly, doubling him up in agony.

Yet the odds would have been far too heavy had it not been for the sudden appearance of the newcomer. He was slender, of medium height, and wore a closely-cropped, jet black beard. Save for his green turban, his clothing was European. He sprang into the fray, laying about him on the heads and shoulders of the rabble with a thick Malacca cane, and shouting in Arabic: “Dogs and sons of dogs! Scum of the suks! I’ll teach you to attack a friendly stranger!”

At this, Blake’s assailants quickly took to their heels, bearing with them the still unconscious monocular, and helping his groaning, scar-faced companion.

The newcomer helped Blake to brush his clothing and put it in order.

“Yukliff–” began Blake gratefully, when the other interrupted.

“Don’t thank me. It was the least I could do after this unwarranted attack by my countrymen. I am devastated. I am ashamed that such a thing could occur on the public streets. And not one of my police officers in sight.”

“Your police officers?” wondered Blake.

“Permit me to introduce myself, effendi. I am Hagg Nadeem.”

Hagg Nadeem! The name was legendary. Blake had often heard tales of the mysterious head of Cairo’s secret police, reputed not only to be an ulema, a Moslem holy man learned in ed din, the faith of Al Islam, and a hagg who had made the holy pilgrimage, but an Oxford graduate, well versed in the arts and sciences of the occident, and a descendent of an ancient line of Egyptian magicians who had communicated their esoteric knowledge from father to son since before the days of Mena, the first pharaoh.

He had regarded many of the tales of this man’s exploits as pure fabrication–utterly preposterous–and the man himself as a myth. Now he stood before him in the flesh, suave and smiling.