Centaurus by Sam Merwin Jr.

Book Details

Centaurus (1953) – A story about a time traveling Roman centurian, space aliens (the Centaureans), flying saucers, the FBI, loose women, and booze. Lots of booze.

Through space and time came the Flying Saucers in the most exciting manhunt ever known! There Were Prizes for Everybody, Including a Special Type of Dreamboat for the Women!

Best known as an editor of several science fiction magazines, Sam Merwin Jr. was also a prolific writer. Samuel Kimball Merwin Jr. (1910 – 1996) wrote mystery and science fiction, published mostly as Sam Merwin Jr. His pseudonyms included Elizabeth Deare Bennett, Matt Lee, Jacques Jean Ferrat and Carter Sprague.

Centaurus is a fifteen chapter novel with 5 illustrations.

Files:

1. Merwin-Centaurus.epub

Excerpt: Centaurus

I

I  MUST have shifted in my seat without knowing it as the bomb went off. While the blinding sphere of pure light failed, followed by the irridescent uprush of unleashed matter that made the ominous, mushroom-shaped cloud. I felt my trousers snag, then rip on the jagged end of a broken spring that had chosen that moment to stab its way through the chair-cover.

There is something about the sight of an atomic blast, even on a screen, that inspires humility—uneasy humility. The fact that men who eat and sleep and catch cold and are disappointed in love have been able to master such elementary power is awe inspiring. The fact that to date the chief use to which they have put their mastery is destructive makes all of us uneasy.

But the combination of these emotions is small-change stuff compared to the chagrin of ripping the pants of a new suit the first time you put it on.

For a brief period, while I lifted myself up and felt for the broken spring-end and poked it back under the chair-cover, I paid no attention to the movie I was supposed to be watching. I’d have moved to another seat, of course, if the projection room had not been packed with operatives. So I muttered the usual things under my breath and tried to crowd myself against one side of the seat, where the spring-end would be unlikely to do further damage.

An incredulous murmur swept through the audience and brought me back to the screen. For a little while I forgot about my torn pants.

The dust that followed the explosion had settled—and the damned thing was still there!

It was sitting on the blasted ground, perky as you please, in the center of a circle of utter destruction. All around it grass and trees had been blown to nothingness. Beyond the range of the camera, I knew, woodland and underbrush were ablaze. But that stinking linen-colored Saucer looked like a car that had just been simonized.

The screen went blank, and the lights went on. Ford Whalen got up and stood in front of us. He said, “Well, men, now you’ve seen it. You know as much as any of us. We don’t yet know a damned thing about the crew, or if they are vulnerable to our weapons. But we do know there’s nothing we can do to hurt that ship of theirs. …”

Looking around me I could see the others were scared as I was. Luke Johnson’s jaws were clamped so tight he had forgotten to chew his gum. On the other side of me Nick Ronzetti looked like a statue—with a toothpick suspended halfway to his mouth. Faraday, sitting a row in front of me, had to strike three matches before he could get his cigarette going.

OUTSIDE the projection room, while we hung around waiting for our assignments and briefing, the boys pretended it hadn’t scared them. Red Dickenson said, “There was something wrong with that bomb. I was out at Los Alamos last year for the tests and they were a lot brighter than that one. I’ll give odds they dropped a magnesium flare by mistake.”

“Sure,” Luke Johnson chimed in, “This whole thing is part of a super-colossal build-up for that new Hollywood epic— Look, Ma, I’m a Flying Saucer.” He turned to me, still sarcastic, and said, “What gives with the new suit, Avon? Somebody been sweetening your private till?”

I looked around furtively and told him to shut up, added, “You don’t have to broadcast it, Luke. After all, a man’s private life. . . .” I was standing against the wall, not sure whether the skirt of my jacket covered the tear or not. It was a good-looking suit—a nailhead sharkskin I’d forked over ninety-two bucks for. If you’re a bachelor, you can buy a suit like that once in a while, even on a government salary. Moe O’Brien, the tailor, had promised me it would wear like iron, but he hadn’t guaranteed it against rips from a wild seat-spring in the F.B.I. projection room.

Luke grunted approval as he rubbed the lapel between thumb and forefinger. Then he said, “On almost anybody else it would look good.” Luke has four kids and a mother-in-law and doesn’t draw a dime more than I do. I didn’t mind his ribbing. As a matter of fact I was grateful for it, and so was everyone else in the room.

We were up against the impossible, and we all knew it.

I was the next to the last guy to be called in for briefing, so it was four o’clock before Ford called me into his office. He looked at his wristwatch as I came in and said, “I meant to give you more time, Avon, but we’re behind schedule already. I want you to be on the five o’clock plane for New York.”

I restrained a beef and sat down carefully. It looked as if I was going to have to take off on my assignment, whatever it was, without getting my pants fixed. Ford may have been running late, but as usual he was slow getting started.

Ford has always been like that—he has to marshal his thoughts before he can weigh anchor. Back home in high school he’d been canned as quarterback of the football team because he took so much time deciding what play to call that the team was always being penalized for taking too long in the huddle.

He’s a little guy—little and chunky and aggressive. If he hadn’t gone into the F.B.I. when he got out of college I don’t suppose I’d ever have thought of joining. As usual, though, I followed along. The odd part of it was that we’ve never liked each other very much. I think Ford is too bound by the book, and he thinks I’m a sentimental slob. I’ve got a hunch we’re both right.

Finally he said, “What do you know about Gerry Marcel?”

I said, “Huh?” and he looked down his broken nose at me. I managed to unscramble some fugitive memories and said, “You mean that Wall Street big shot who killed Marcus Offord and disappeared? What’s he got to do with this?”

“Probably nothing,” Ford told me. “But we’ve got to follow every lead, no matter how foolish it looks.” I shivered and waited for him to say, “We must leave no stone unturned.” He said it.

I waited him out and he finally said, “I want you to find Gerry Marcel—or if he’s dead, I want to know it.”

“What the hell,” I countered, “we’ve got a file on him, haven’t we?”

“We had a file on him,” Ford corrected quietly. There was another pause while we both thought that over. F.B.I. files are supposed to be inviolate, but once in a great while—well, people are human, unfortunately. What it meant was that Gerry Marcel must have had some very important and powerful supporters who were interested in seeing that the F.B.I. had nothing on him.

“You may not know it,” said Ford, and his voice like his face became harsh, “but I was looking into Marcel when he killed Offord. It was probably the one good thing the guy ever did.”

“He was never sentenced, was he?” I asked.

FORD pressed his lips together, and worked his jaw back and forth. Then he said, “Marcel never served a day. Don’t ask me what happened. Two hours after he killed Offord I was on my way to Okinawa to check on a war-surplus fraud.”

“Like that, eh?”

Excerpt From: Sam Merwin Jr. “Centaurus.”