The great secret, p.1
The Great Secret, page 1
The Great Secret
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
© 2008 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: © 1949 Standard Magazines, Inc. Story preview cover art: © 1948 Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. The Beast, The Slaver and Space Can story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations; Story Preview and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-59212-649-1 Mobipocket version
ISBN 978-1-59212-565-4 ebook version
ISBN 978-1-59212-371-1 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-249-3 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927526
Contents
FOREWORD
THE GREAT SECRET
SPACE CAN
THE BEAST
THE SLAVER
STORY PREVIEW:
THE PROFESSOR
WAS A THIEF
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 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 Great Secret
The Great Secret
SWEEPING clouds shadowed the tawny plain, and far off in the east the plumes of night spread gently, mournfully, burying the corpse of the Livian day. Fanner Marston, a tattered speck upon a ridge, looked eastward, looked to the glory he sought and beheld it.
Throat and tongue swollen with thirst, green eyes blazing now with new ecstasy, he knew he had it. He would gain it, would realize that heady height upon which he had elected to stand. Before him lay the Great Secret! The S ecret which had made a dead race rule the Universe! And that Secret would be his, Fanner Marston’s, and Fanner Marston would be the ruler, the new ruler, the arbiter of destiny for all the Universe!
All through these weeks he had stumbled over the gutted plains toward these blue mountains beneath the scorching double sun. He had suffered agonies but he had won!
There, glittering in the yellow sunlight was Parva, dead, beautiful city of the ancients, city of the blessed, city of knowledge and power.
There, glittering in the yellow sunlight was Parva, dead, beautiful city of the ancients, city of the blessed, city of knowledge and power.
Fanner laughed. He was strong; he was lean; but he was not handsome; and of all the things about him this laugh, distorted by thirst-ravaged lips, was the least pleasant. His eyes, which had of late grown so very dull, flamed greenly with the ecstasy which came with that vision.
He had won. They had told him that he could not; the legends said it was not possible for any mortal man to win. But the spell of the ancients was broken, their books were open, their riches lay for the taking. Parva was there! Parva was his!
It mattered nothing to Fanner that nearly twenty miles of gashed and forbidding terrain still lay between him and his goal. It mattered not that his canteens were empty; nor did it matter that, behind the ridge on which he stood, his monocycle, last vehicle of his caravan, was a ruined wreck.
He was glad now that his companions were dead—of thirst, of quarrels, of disease. He would not have to murder the last of them now and so preserve to himself this incalculable thing which awaited him. Fate was shaping everything for him!
He could do these twenty miles by noon of the next day, do them the hard way, on foot and without water, for there was something to sustain him now; he knew that the city was real, had truly existed through all these ages, was just as the history books had said it was. And if this much was true, then all was true. And he had seen the silver river!
Fanner’s boots were scuffed relics but he set forth down the rocky slope and so great was his ecstasy that he did not feel the sharp bites of the rocks, nor did he feel the fingers of thirst which were throttling him. He was hard; he could outlive forty men and had done it; he would succeed, for he was Fanner Marston!
He had fought these deserts and mountains and he had whipped them—almost. He would live through to the end, and see the Great Secret which awaited him emblazon his name throughout space!
Fanner Marston would bring a new era, a day when spaceships no longer had to land in seas to save themselves from being shattered, when men would be hampered no longer in combating the atmospheres of many now uninhabitable planets. The wealth of the Universe would be his for the taking; the entire race of mankind would bow to his command like vassals. For there, glittering in the sunset, was Parva—Parva, the city of the Great Secret.
Darkness caught him, and he groped his stumbling way among a great forest of black boulders. He did not mind the shocks of falling, the cuts inflicted upon him, the gouges of the unkind earth; nor did he mind the constantly increasing size of his tongue. Distance he had mastered; mere thirst would not stop him now. And besides, he had seen it, just like in the legends. The silver river. What cared he for thirst when that mighty stream awaited him?
Fanner Marston, master of the Universe: it was a pleasant title to resound through his brain.
Black-mouthed with thirst, stumbling with fatigue, lightheaded with his dream of power, he struggled on through the night.
Fanner Marston had always considered himself some favorite child of fate; he knew now that that must be so. How otherwise could he win through where so many had failed? How otherwise could he alone of forty men come to his goal? Fate meant this to happen to him; the devils who were his guardians strongly bore him to his victory. He alone would reach Parva; he alone would know.
He had forgotten where first he had heard the legends of this city he now approached, for he had not immediately grasped their truth and significance. As a child he had been too hardly driven as a slavey in a pirate camp to dream much on the mastery of the Universe. As a young man petty thievery in the large cities of the Universe had occupied his skills. Not until he had become master of his own craft and crew, not until he realized that there was destiny awaiting him, did he turn his mind in earnest upon Parva.
There, men said, lay the most advanced science of the Universe, sealed up in a strangely constructed city, covered with the dust of eons. It had been seen from afar by this one; it had been reported by a man gone mad with thirst; it had crept down the centuries in the literature of space. One and all agreed that Parva and Parva alone contained the sum total of knowledge gathered by a vanished race, one which had been so far advanced that ethereal communication with the planets had been possible, that its spaceships could land on ground. That civilization had used atomic power, not radioactive fuel. Its men had been able to clothe themselves against the rigors of the many uninhabitable planets. And then Parva alone remained of all that great culture and Parva itself had died. But within it there must be the Great Secret.
Of the Great Secret, men understood very little save that which had been expressed in a short formula. But with that formula a man might master all.
Fanner Marston had no qualms about getting out, for if he had the Great Secret, would not travel be a simple thing? He could see himself arriving in triumph on Earth, center of the universal culture which now obtained. He could hear the cheering throngs and feel the waves of adulation which would be his. And he could nearly taste the liquors—fantastically expensive and satisfying—which he would drink, and feel the warm flesh of the women who would love him, would love the master of the Universe. And he would tell men to go hither and thither; he would move great armies and fleets; he would cause vast conquests, and kings would bow before his brilliance and his might. For all of eternity he would be remembered. The Great Secret would be his.
Dreaming, not realizing how acutely his body suffered and how slender became his strength, he struggled on until dawn, through the dry washes, over the shaled ridges, through the gritty valleys. He to whom the most beautiful women and the most exquisite liquors of the Universe would be a commonplace could not be worried now about mere thirst and exhaustion.
As the light broke, and as he mounted a ridge, he could again see the city and before it the silver river. He had less than eight miles to go; the towers looked huge and overbearing. For a moment a small doubt clamored to be heard and then he swallowed it in a tidal wave of exultation. Women, liquor, power! He, Fanner Marston, stood on the threshold of All!
He started down the ridge, but fell and tumbled far before he could stop himself and stand again. The physical shock of shale cutting into him as it slid brought him close to the reality which waited to torture him. His hand trembled as he sought to staunch a flow of blood from his thigh. A great weariness sought to sweep upward from that gash and with an angry gesture Fanner Marston put it down. He crossed the gully, clambered up the far side and went through the rocks toward the city. Now and then he stumbled, caught himself and stumbled again. Once he fell and lay sprawled for several minutes before consciousness returned.
It was the double sun, that’s what it was. The great dumbbell star blazed furiously now, two hours into the day, and brought heat waves writhing up from the tawny plain, writhing up into the shrieking wind which raced clouds through the iridescent blue heavens. The avarice of that sun, which would let no moisture fall, took away what small stores of moisture might remain in Fanner Marston, took with them the hidden reserves of energy.
He fell more often now and the grin upon his swollen lips grew more fixed. Women, cheering throngs, liquor— he could think of them and find strength in them and go on. But little by little he was losing his grip upon the reality of his dreams and, gradually, he was becoming aware of the actuality of this searing plain, the shrieking, dry wind, the sharp rocks, the double sun which drained him and charred his very eyelids.
