Terror Out of Space by H. Haverstock Hill

Book Details

Terror Out of Space (1934) – Planters in the South Seas make First Contact with aliens when they are abducted to Mars. They find themselves coming to trust these Martians especially in light of the common threat that comes from the far side of the Moon.

Lights in the sky, static on the radio, and a clean swath cut through the jungle by a red ray. The disappearance of their plantation manager does nothing to allay their fears as the night gets darker. An expedition mounted the next morning leads our heroes to First Contact – at the point of weapons.

Terror Out of Space (1934)
A Serial in Four Parts —Part One
Chapter I – The Light in the Sky
Chapter II – Unrest in the Compound
Chapter III – The Red Light
Chapter IV – Retallick
Chapter V – What the Morning Brought Forth
Chapter VI – The Stellarites
Chapter VII – The Take-Off
Chapter VIII – The Voyage
Chapter IX – The Voyage, Continued
Chapter X – Developments
Chapter XI – The Peril in the Void

Part II – What Went Before:
Chapter XII – Combat
Chapter XIII – What the Sphere Held
Chapter XIV – The Landing
Chapter XV – The Second Satellite
Chapter XVI – Getting Acquainted
Chapter XVII – The Great Decision
Chapter XVIII – The Expedition

Part III – What Has Gone Before:
Chapter XIX – The Fleet Takes Off
Chapter XX – Pursuit
Chapter XXI – Homeward Bound
Chapter XXII – “A World Convinced …”
Chapter XXIII – “… While Rome Burns”

Part IV – Conclusion
Chapter XXIV – Control!
Chapter XXV – The Race
Chapter XXVI – Victory?
Chapter XXVII – Ados

J. M. (James Morgan) Walsh (1897-1952) frequently wrote as H. Haverstock Hill, Stephen Maddock, George M. White or Jack Carew.

Walsh was born in Geelong, Victoria, Australia and educated in Melbourne and is best known as an extremely prolific writer of crime mysteries, mostly set in England. After experiences in auctioneering and book-selling, Walsh visited England in 1925 to negotiate with publishers. He returned to Victoria but left for permanent residence in England in 1929.

Hill authored short fiction from 1913, and began to publish novels from 1921; from the mid-1920s he primarily wrote mystery stories often writing as Stephen Maddock.

Terror Out of Space was published in four parts in Amazing Stories in the February, March, April and May, 1934 issues. It was the cover story of the February, 1934 issue.

Terror Out of Space has 4 illustrations

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Excerpt: Terror Out of Space

Chapter I

The Light in the Sky

“MY NEXT,” said Captain Spain thoughtfully, “is going to be a sea-plane. I’m getting rather tired of island schooners, even when they do have auxiliary engines.”

It was one of those baking hot afternoons that one strikes only in the Solomons, a day when the sun beats mercilessly down from a clear sky on a sea of gleaming brass, and even the jungle itself seems to sweat in the heat. Since early dawn I had been working on our schooner at anchor in the bay, but by lunch-time I had everything more or less ship-shape, so I decided to call it a day and get back to shore. For one thing it was far too hot to do any more work, and for the other the auxiliary engines had developed one or two defects about which I thought it just as well to consult Spain before I did anything further.

We had more or less thrashed the matter out at lunch, but later, when the four of us—Spain and Arabella, his wife, Marian and I—were sitting out on the verandah of the bungalow, he came back to the matter, and presently dug up the idea that must have been maturing in his mind for quite the last hour or so.

I saw Arabella shift in her seat at the mention of sea-planes— one could almost imagine her shying like a startled horse —and a gleam came into her eye.

“You’ll break your neck,” she said calmly. “You’re too old to go monkeying about with these new-fangled inventions. Besides I don’t hold with them. To my mind flying in the air seems rather like tempting Providence.”

A remarkable woman, this Arabella, a leader and a pioneer, one who from choice had made her home in the rough places of the world, and had never cared a hoot about any man until she met Spain. Then in their Indian summer they had married, and.… But the full story of that as well as my own romance is written elsewhere for those who care to read it.

Spain filled his pipe with studied deliberation, lighted it and puffed the blue smoke into the still air before he answered.

“I don’t know so much about that,” he said slowly. “Almost anything is tempting Providence, if it comes to that. This is the twentieth century, you know … march of progress … and all that. We’ll have to shed a lot of the old ways and old ideas if we want to keep pace with the rest of the world. Just think how quickly we could cover our factories and plantations if we could make our visits of inspection in a sea-plane. Of course we’d have to stick to the schooner or something like it for freight purposes, but.…”

“But nothing!” said Arabella sharply. “I’d sooner be shot than go aloft in a seaplane, and that’s final.”

It wasn’t, though none of us could have been expected to know it at the time. I’ve often wondered since, what Arabella would have said or done had she been permitted even the slightest inkling of what was presently to happen, if she had even the faintest idea of what we four, first of all the human race, were presently to see. Yet I don’t know. The chances are that she would have carried on just as before, have done precisely what she actually did, when the necessity arose. Arabella could always be counted on to do her share, even though she reserved the right —to use her own phraseology— to register her kick.

Neither Marian nor I said anything. For my part, though I would have liked to put in my oar. I did nothing of the sort, but stared out to sea, and when the reflected light of the sun began to hurt my eyes, I shifted my gaze to the clear sky above.

Spain and Arabella still went on with their friendly wrangling, which meant so much at the time, yet ten minutes afterward mattered not one jot. We took no notice. They were, so to speak, merely letting off steam. Once or twice I heard Arabella mention my name, not in an entirely complimentary tone. Though, as I’ve said already, I wasn’t actually listening. I had a good idea of what she was saying, something about the recent interest that I, in an amateur way, was taking in science, something about the dreams and the visions I sometimes fashioned for myself. I think she had a fancy I might have contaminated her husband … a little.

“Perhaps I had, if interesting him could be called that. For myself I did not care much what anyone thought, Marian excepted, that is. She understood. She was interested herself, too. Once, you see, not so long ago in point of time, centuries it seemed when one lived through it, there had been a little Billy Harper. Then something happened—it hurts me even now to write about it—and our little son, who had been in this world but a few short months, passed out of it again. He had stayed just long enough to twine his tiny fingers round our heart-strings with a grip that would never be broken in this world or any other. And then … then we learnt there could never be another to take his place.

DO YOU WONDER that I had to find new interests, new dreams, something to take mine and Marian’s thoughts away from what might have been? Perhaps the whole thing was pre-ordained, mapped out from the very beginning, so that when our great adventure began, one of us at least should be in a position to comprehend something of what was going on. Yet there were others better fitted who could have been chosen, men whose names were household words in their particular domain of science, who would have given their very souls for the chance of standing in my shoes. But they did not, and that is all I can say of it.

Something of the sadness that tinged my thoughts, as old memories came back to me, must have communicated itself to Marian, for as I shifted my glance to her, I saw her expression change, soften a little, and her hand stretched out and touched mine, ever so gently. Our eyes met.

I turned quickly away. It is not in a grown man to let others, even his most intimate and dearest, see the sorrow for what might have been brim up in his eyes. Instead I stared fixedly ahead at the clear blue of the sky.

Then I started and caught convulsively at Marian’s hand. The sky was not so blue nor so unflecked as it had been when last I had looked. Something had happened in the interval. I can hardly describe in words just exactly what it was that had occurred. But somewhere away to the north, where, invisible, lay Florida Island, the sky seemed to have split in twain. It was as though a gleaming sword of bronze had riven the firmament, a sword that rushed swiftly on, glowing brassily as it passed.

Had it been night I might have guessed a meteorite; being day I felt it could be nothing of the sort, and so could only stare and gasp. I must all unknowingly have risen to my feet in my excitement, for, vaguely, as though it were a thing afar-off and unconnected with me, came the scraping of chairs as the others sprang up. From Spain came a muttered exclamation.

“WHATEVER is it?” said Marian’s voice in my ear.

“I … I don’t quite know,” I said rather haltingly. “A falling star … a meteorite … something of the sort perhaps.”

But even as I spoke I felt—knew—that it wasn’t anything of the sort. I hadn’t time to formulate any other alternative, however, for the thing, whatever it was, shot clean out of our range of vision as swiftly as it had entered it, leaving the sky as clear and unflecked as it had been before.

Yet it was not quite the same. A sense of heaviness and foreboding seemed to hang in the atmosphere; the very air felt hotter than before, though that indeed may have been due merely to our overheated imaginations.

Excerpt From: H. Haverstock Hill. “Terror Out of Space.”