The Green God E-Book

L. Ron Hubbard

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Military & War Short Stories Collection
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 128

Beschreibung

Private detective Sam Spade nearly died, several times over, chasing The Maltese Falcon. But what Spade faced in pursuit of the black bird was child’s play compared to what Lieutenant Bill Mahone of Naval Intelligence endures when he sets out to find The Green God.

He’s tortured with knives, threatened with a slow, painful death, and buried alive. And then things get really nasty. The entire Chinese city of Tientsin is under siege from within—the streets filled with rioting, arson, mass looting and murder. And all because the city’s sacred idol, The Green God, has gone missing.

Mahone’s convinced he knows who stole the deity of jade, diamonds and pearls. To retrieve it, though, he’ll have to go undercover and underground. But he’s walking a razor’s edge—between worship and warfare, between a touch of heaven and a taste of bloody hell.

As a young man, Hubbard visited Manchuria, where his closest friend headed up British intelligence in northern China. Hubbard gained a unique insight into the intelligence operations and spy-craft in the region as well as the criminal trade in sacred objects. It was on this experience that he based The Green God, which was his first professional sale, published in February, 1934—the beginning of a very remarkable and prolific writing career.

Also includes the adventure Five Mex for a Million, in which an American Army captain, falsely accused of murder, finds himself taking on the Chinese government, a powerful Russian general, and a mysterious, unexpected passenger.

Leseprobe

SELECTED FICTION WORKSBY 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’snovellas 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

© 2013 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.

Cover art and “Five Mex for a Million” story illustration from Top-Notch Magazine and 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 and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59212-562-3 EPUB versionISBN 978-1-59212-755-9 Kindle versionISBN 978-1-59212-360-5 print versionISBN 978-1-59212-315-5 audiobook version

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903548

Contents

FOREWORD

THE GREEN GOD

FIVE MEX FOR A MILLION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

STORY PREVIEW

SPY KILLER

L. RON HUBBARD IN THEGOLDEN AGE OFPULP FICTION

THE STORIES FROM THEGOLDEN AGE

GLOSSARY

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!

The Green God

The Green God

SWIFTLY Lieutenant Bill Mahone of Naval Intelligence pulled his automatic from its shoulder holster and crawled along the side of the coffin, screening himself from possible guards.

Against the dark sky he could see the outline of the mound which marked the tomb of General Tao Lo, and around it the many unburied coffins which might or might not house the dead of Tientsin.

It was a dangerous mission that had brought Mahone venturing into the night. He had convinced his commander that they would not be able to stop the constant looting and murdering that had cast a reign of terror over the city until the Green God was back in its temple.

Tientsin’s Native Quarter was half in flames; the dead were heaped in the gutters. The Chinese were convinced that their city would fall, now that their idol was gone. Before long these fanatics might sweep into the International Settlement and wipe it out.

Mahone had received a slip of paper that one of the natives in the Intelligence Department had brought in. It had been found in the Native Quarter, and the Chinese ideographs had read, “A jade calling card for General Tao Lo.” The general had been dead for a year, but Mahone was convinced that the Green God had been hidden in his tomb.

Now Mahone, disguised as a Chinese coolie, had come alone to try and get the Green God from the general’s tomb and save the city before it was too late.

As he crawled along the side of the coffin a cry rang out directly above him and he felt the bite of a knife in his shoulder. With a spring he catapulted away and looked back. A dark figure leaped to follow him! Mahone’s automatic spat fire and the shadow by the coffin screamed in agony. In front of him he could see other shadows rising up like ghosts. The faint light fell on the blades of many knives. Vicious snarls were hurled at Mahone as the guards swept down on him.

Knives flashed. The automatic spat again and again. There seemed no end to these fanatics. Bodies hurled their fighting lengths upon Mahone.

With his empty automatic he clubbed and beat about him. He could feel the impact of his steel crashing down upon skulls, arms, bodies. Chinese were sweeping over him in a stifling mass. Knives bit into his flesh like white-hot irons.

He felt men go down upon him, beside him, as he brought his gun butt down. But each time he struck, another screaming demon leaped to take the empty place. His arm was aching with exertion. He was bleeding from many wounds, but he fought on relentlessly.

Feet kicked him in the face, talonlike hands sought his throat, knives lanced in for his heart. His hand was sticky from the blood of crushed skulls.

By rolling over and over he managed to baffle the knives which flashed above him. Suddenly he brought up against a coffin. Then, protected on one side, he tried to gain his feet.

But each time he rose as high as his knees, a body would launch itself into him, pinning him again to the ground. He was partially protected by the inert Chinese he had either killed or knocked unconscious, and hope that he might be able to escape welled up within him.

His left hand fell upon the hilt of a knife and he snatched it up, lashing at the air before him. He felt that blade catch again and again, but each time, he pulled it from the flesh it had met and threshed out for new targets.

The knife blade was growing sticky and he felt a hot trickle of moisture running down inside his sleeve. The salty stench of blood was in his nostrils as he fought.

He was almost exhausted when the rush stopped momentarily. He sprang up and stood for an instant looking about him. Then the charge closed in again and the fiendish impact of bodies almost forced him to the ground once more.

With a leap he gained the top of a coffin lid and stood there a moment, thrusting down into the mass below him. They were closing in at his back. He felt a knife gash his thigh.

With the barrel of his pistol held tightly in his hand he beat down into the writhing shadows which struck up at him.

He sprang clear of the clutching hands and hit the ground running. A swelling roar of sheer rage met this tactic as the guards saw their quarry escaping. With one accord they plunged after him.

Running with all the speed he could wrest from his tired body, Mahone dashed around the corners of the grim boxes and skirted the mounds.

Suddenly a shot rang out ahead of him, to be followed by another. Mahone zigzagged and tried to change his course. Flame burst out at him again.

A bullet caught him in the shoulder, whirling him about. He lurched, stumbled, tried to catch himself. With the momentum of his speed carrying him forward, he plunged, almost horizontal, into the side of a coffin.

The yells grew dim in his ears and he felt himself slipping into the dread black of unconsciousness.

When he regained his senses he felt himself held tight between two wooden walls which crushed at him. He tried to move his arms but he found that they were bound to his sides. His legs were lashed out straight and he could not bend his knees. Not a foot above his face, he could feel the presence of wood.

Suddenly he realized where he was. He was bound tightly in a coffin. The heavy lid had been placed above him. He was sealed in. And the smell of rotting flesh was making his senses reel.

He was helpless in the hands of the men who had stolen the Green God, turning Tientsin into a bedlam of murder. Did they think he was dead? Would they leave him there beneath that heavy lid to die?

Although the lid was not nailed down, as Chinese coffin lids never are, its weight was sufficient to resist any effort to move it from the inside, even if his hands were free.

Straining his arms into his sides and then out again, he found that he was powerless to release the strong ropes which held him.

He stared up into blackness, a panicky sense of failure taking hold of him. He had failed in his mission to return the Green God to its proper place in the temple, and in that failure he was about to die horribly.

The fetid air closed in upon him and seemed to weigh down and pin him in his gruesome confines.

Then, through the thick walls of his prison, he could hear the murmur of voices. He pressed his ear to the wood to hear better.