Early Stories by Fletcher Pratt

Book Details

Early science fiction stories and collaborations by Fletcher Pratt.

The War of the Giants (1931)
The Mad Destroyer (1930)
The Great Steel Panic (1928) by Irvin Lester and Fletcher Pratt
Danger (1929) by Irvin Lester and Fletcher Pratt
Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium (1934)
The Pineal Stimulator (1930) by I. M. Stephens and Fletcher Pratt
The Octopus Cycle (1928) by Irvin Lester and Fletcher Pratt
a novelette of ten chapters.

Murray Fletcher Pratt (1897–1956) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and history. He is best known for his works on naval history and on the American Civil War and for the fiction he wrote with L. Sprague de Camp. Pratt collaborated with a number of other authors on various fantasy and science fiction stories.

Early Stories contains 11 illustrations.

Files:

1. EarlyStories-Pratt.epub

Excerpt: The Mad Destroyer

“THERE was nothing opposite my name on the assignment list, and though a promising crap game was going on in the engraving room the prospect of even such mild exercise as rolling the bones was unpleasant on so hot a night. At the risk of being nabbed for re-write duty I slipped into the city room, composed myself at my desk and began to look over the paper. I might have spared myself the trouble: the world wagged on without excitement; nothing ever happened any more. And out of sheer ennui I began to work the cross-word puzzle.

One side of an irritating conversation that McCarthy, the city editor, was holding over the phone with somebody began to impress itself on my consciousness and I looked up.

Just at that moment he hung up the receiver; his eye lit up with the ghoulish glee city editors always have when they can give one an unpleasant task, and he called, “Furness!”

“Go out to thirteen Argule Road,” he said, shoving me a slip of paper, “and see Professor William A. Brooke. Get that? Brooke, not Brooks. He’s the astronomy professor at Lyon U., and he lives there. Has his observatory in the back.

Got some kind of a story about a comet hitting the earth or something. Find out what there is to it, and get all the pictures you can. Might make a Sunday story if it looks good. And be back by ten-thirty; I want you to do some re-write on the A. P. mail stuff for fillers.”

It wouldn’t have happened on any paper but the Times, I told myself angrily. But McCarthy always had more reporters hanging around the city room than he knew what to do with (provided by a munificent and enthusiastic management which advertised a policy of “Covering every event, no matter how small.”) To keep them in a proper state of subordination he felt it his duty to give them all a wild-goose chase once a week at the least. McCarthy! That fat tub of—butter! What makes him think he’s a newspaper man? (I was boarding a car full of various sweaty individuals and wishing them all in Gehenna). How unpleasant he was with his moonlike face shining with tiny globules of perspiration.

The builders of Lyon University, wishing it to have the advantages of nearness to the city without the attendant disadvantages, had planted it far on the outskirts. Even beyond the main buildings of the place, and a good long walk from the end of the street car line on that hot night, was Professor Brooke’s observatory—a little round tower with one long wing running out toward the street, perched atop the only eminence the county boasted. It had been the professor’s home and workshop for a good many years.

Let’s see now. … He had discovered the big comet there, good Lord, how many years ago? There he had conducted his researches into the motions of the planets. I remember the little parade when the ambassador of some foreign power had come to town to tender him a decoration in the name of his government, also long ago. Since the death of his only daughter, last year, the professor had been more or less in retirement It was considered not good form to disturb the old man by signing up for one of his personal courses. There was even a rumor running through the whispering gallery of the newspaper offices that he had gone a little off his chump. Hadn’t he got religion or something? Some queer story about his actions on the occasion of a noted evangelist’s visit to town seemed to be just eluding my memory . . . At any rate, most people thought of him as a figure of the past, and it would probably have surprised even the readers of his many books to know he was still living.

I toiled up the steps to the professor’s front door. The bell was of the old-fashioned pull type; the house utterly dark. I gave a couple of vigorous yanks and heard a faint echo of the clamor, far away. No answer. I pulled again—and down toward the end of the long hall a yellow pennon of light shot out and an indistinct form was outlined against the glare.

It proved to be a woman, tall and muscular, with a face hardened by years of labor and grey hair pulled back tight from her forehead to a knot on the nape of the neck. What do you want?” she inquired ungraciously, holding the door open a fraction of an inch.

Down the hall another streamer of light shot out. “I’m from the Times, I began, “Professor Brooke—”

“Anna!” came a deep voice, “Anna! If it’s the young man from the newspaper, send him in.”

He met me at the door of the room—a big man, well over six feet, now slightly bowed with age, with small eyes under a huge leonine mane of white hair, peering at me in a manner just barely courteous. (An irascible Professor Brooke, I thought). “Professor Brooke?” I began, in my best manner, “I’m from the—”

“Yes, from the Times. Come in. I have something of the utmost interest to the general public.” He stood aside for me to enter, holding the door open with hands that trembled with the palsy of age. “You are a college graduate? I asked particularly for a college graduate. The ordinary reporter would not understand the importance of the discovery I have made. It is necessary that it be set forth clearly as it is my final legacy to the world. I shall not be here long.”

“I hope not, sir,” I said, glancing up curiously. “Yes, I’m a college graduate. Cornell, ’21.” (Reporting teaches one to lie quickly and without effort.)

One had an impression of dusty age and Victorian furniture in his study. Pity Lyon U. couldn’t put things in shape for its most distinguished professor. Or maybe he didn’t want them to. . . High ceiling, fireplace surrounded by gimcrack carving. Shelves and shelves of books reaching away up into the gloom—a dusty gloom overhead where the rays of the old-fashioned oil burning student lamp on the desk could not reach. Victorian swivel chair in which the professor seated himself with a creak. No carpet—my footsteps echoed hollowly. Altogether an eerie place, like a room long abandoned by living things.

“Pull up a chair, young man. I dislike raising my voice.” (His eyes, big and deep-set, caught queer gleams from the student lamp, like opals. A slight shiver of discomfort ran through me). For a moment he looked me up and down, like a new specimen. (Do astronomers examine specimens, I wondered?) I was recalled by his voice.

“Did you take an astronomy course at college?”

“No.”

“Ah, too bad. My old friend, Professor Burgess has . . . pardon me, I had forgotten for a moment that he is dead. . . And doubtless you have forgotten a good deal of your mathematics. However, it is not important; the main thing is that you apprehend the facts correctly. I suppose I can trust you that far?”

I stirred in my chair and to encourage him produced the folded sheets of copy paper that are every reporter’s notebook. (Singular beginning to an interview, I thought.) The student lamp guttered a trifle. He adjusted it, making tall shadows leap among the jig-saw decorations of the fireplace, and then fumbled in his papers.

“The world is coming to an end!” he ejaculated with startling suddenness, looking me square in the eyes.

“Yes?” I said (Too bad, I thought, the old man is giving out.)

Excerpt From: Fletcher Pratt. “Early Stories.”