Philip Dick - The Science Fiction Anthology

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This collection brings together some of the most incredible sci-fi stories ever told in one convenient, high-quality, Kindle volume!
This book now contains several HTML tables of contents that will make reading a real pleasure!
The Sentimentalists, by Murray Leinster
The Girls from Earth, by Frank Robinson
The Death Traps of FX-31, by Sewell Wright
Song in a minor key, by C.L. Moore
Sentry of the Sky, by Evelyn E. Smith
Meeting of the Minds, by Robert Sheckley
Junior, by Robert Abernathy
Death Wish, by Ned Lang
Dead World, by Jack Douglas
Cost of Living, by Robert Sheckley
Aloys, by R.A. Lafferty
With These Hands, by C.M. Kornbluth
What is POSAT?, by Phyllis Sterling-Smith
A Little Journey, by Ray Bradbury
Hunt the Hunter, by Kris Neville
Citizen Jell, by Michael Shaara
Operation Distress, by Lester Del Rey
Syndrome Johnny, by Charles Dye
Psychotennis, anyone?, by Lloyd Williams
Prime Difference, by Alan Nourse
Doorstep, by Keith Laumer
The Drug, by C.C. MacApp
An Elephant For the Prinkip, by L.J. Stecher
License to Steal, by Louis Newman
The Last Letter, by Fritz Lieber
The Stuff, by Henry Slesar
The Celestial Hammerlock, by Donald Colvin
Always A Qurono, by Jim Harmon
Jamieson, by Bill Doede
A Fall of Glass, by Stanley Lee
Shatter the Wall, by Sydney Van Scyoc
Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher
Thy Name Is Woman, by Kenneth O'Hara
Twelve Times Zero, by Howard Browne
All Day Wednesday, by Richard Olin
Blind Spot, by Bascom Jones
Double Take, by Richard Wilson
Field Trip, by Gene Hunter
Larson's Luck, by Gerald Vance
Navy Day, by Harry Harrison
One Martian Afternoon, by Tom Leahy
Planet of Dreams, by James McKimmey
Prelude To Space, by Robert Haseltine
Pythias, by Frederik Pohl
Show Business, by Boyd Ellanby
Slaves of Mercury, by Nat Schachner
Sound of Terror, by Don Berry
The Big Tomorrow, by Paul Lohrman
The Four-Faced Visitors of…Ezekiel, by Arthur Orton
The Happy Man, by Gerald Page
The Last Supper, by T.D. Hamm
The One and the Many, by Milton Lesser
The Other Likeness, by James Schmitz
The Outbreak of Peace, by H.B. Fyfe
The Skull, by Philip K. Dick
The Smiler, by Albert Hernhunter
The Unthinking Destroyer, by Roger Phillips
Two Timer, by Frederic Brown
Vital Ingredient, by Charles De Vet
Weak on Square Roots, by Russell Burton
With a Vengeance, by J.B. Woodley
Zero Hour, by Alexander Blade
The Great Nebraska Sea, by Allan Danzig
The Valor of Cappen Varra, by Poul Anderson
A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer
Hall of Mirrors, by Frederic Brown
Common Denominator, by John MacDonald
Doctor, by Murray Leinster
The Nothing Equation, by Tom Godwin
The Last Evolution, by John Campbell
A Hitch in Space, by Fritz Leiber
On the Fourth Planet, by J.F. Bone
Flight From Tomorrow, by H. Beam Piper
Card Trick, by Walter Bupp
The K-Factor, by Harry Harrison
The Lani People, by J. F. Bone
Advanced Chemistry, by Jack Huekels
Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas, by R. A. Lafferty
Keep Out, by Frederic Brown
All Cats are Gray, by Andre Norton
A Problem in Communication, by Miles J. Breuer
The Terrible Tentacles of L-472, by Sewell Peaslee Wright
Marooned Under the Sea, by Paul Ernst
The Murder Machine, by Hugh B. Cave
The Attack from Space, by Captain S. P. Meek
The Knights of Arthur, by Frederik Pohl
And All the Earth a Grave, by C.C. MacApp
Citadel, by Algis Budrys
Micro-Man, by Weaver Wright
....

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“Do you really think this is necessary?” the assistant inspector asked. He had already requested a transfer to Flight Control.

“Sure it is,” the senior inspector said. “Can’t tell what these ships might bring in.”

“I suppose so,” the assistant said. “Still, a Martian whoosis wouldn’t even be able to live on Earth. Would it?”

“How should I know?” the senior inspector said. “I’m no botanist. Maybe they don’t know, either.”

“Seems like a waste of—hey!”

“What is it?” the senior inspector asked.

“I thought I saw something,” the assistant said. “Looked a little like a palmetto bug. Over by that shelf.”

The senior inspector adjusted his respirator more snugly over his face and motioned to his assistant to do the same. He advanced slowly toward the shelf, unfastening a second nozzle from the pressure tank on his back. He turned it on, and a cloud of greenish gas sprayed out.

“There,” the senior inspector said. “That should take care of your bug.” He knelt down and looked under the shelf. “Nothing here.”

“It was probably a shadow,” the assistant said.

Together they sprayed the entire interior of the ship, paying particular attention to the small box of Martian artifacts. They left the gas-filled ship and dogged the hatch again.

“Now what?” the assistant asked.

“Now we leave the ship sealed for three days,” the senior inspector said. “Then we inspect again. You find me the animal that’ll live through that.”

The Quedak, who had been clinging to the underside of the assistant’s shoe between the heel and the sole, released his hold. He watched the shadowy biped figures move away, talking in their deep, rumbling, indecipherable voices. He felt tired and unutterably lonely.

But buoying him up was the thought of the Quedak mission. Only that was important. The first part of the mission was accomplished. He had landed safely on an inhabited planet. Now he needed food and drink. Then he had to have rest, a great deal of rest to restore his dormant faculties. After that he would be ready to give this world what it so obviously needed—the cooperation possible only through the Quedak mind.

He crept slowly down the shadowy yard, past the deserted hulls of spaceships. He came to a wire fence and sensed the high-voltage electricity running through it. Gauging his distance carefully, the Quedak jumped safely through one of the openings in the mesh.

This was a very different section. From here the Quedak could smell water and food. He moved hastily forward, then stopped.

He sensed the presence of a man. And something else. Something much more menacing.

“Who’s there?” the watchman called out. He waited, his revolver in one hand, his flashlight in the other. Thieves had broken into the yards last week; they had stolen three cases of computer parts bound for Rio. Tonight he was ready for them.

He walked forward, an old, keen-eyed man holding his revolver in a rock-steady fist. The beam of his flashlight probed among the cargoes. The yellow light flickered along a great pile of precision machine tools for South Africa, past a water-extraction plant for Jordan and a pile of mixed goods for Rabaul.

“You better come out,” the watchman shouted. His flashlight probed at sacks of rice for Shanghai and power saws for Burma. Then the beam of light stopped abruptly.

“I’ll be damned,” the watchman said. Then he laughed. A huge and red-eyed rat was glaring into the beam of his flashlight. It had something in its jaws, something that looked like an unusually large cockroach.

“Good eating,” the watchman said. He holstered his revolver and continued his patrol.

A large black animal had seized the Quedak, and he felt heavy jaws close over his back. He tried to fight; but, blinded by a sudden beam of yellow light, he was betrayed by total and enervating confusion.

The yellow light went off. The black beast bit down hard on the Quedak’s armored back. The Quedak mustered his remaining strength, and, uncoiling his long, scorpion-jointed tail, lashed out.

He missed, but the black beast released him hastily. They circled each other, the Quedak hoisting his tail for a second blow, the beast unwilling to turn loose this prey.

The Quedak waited for his chance. Elation filled him. This pugnacious animal could be the first, the first on this planet to experience the Quedak mission. From this humble creature a start could be made....

The beast sprang and its white teeth clicked together viciously. The Quedak moved out of the way and its barb-headed tail flashed out, fastening itself in the beast’s back. The Quedak held on grimly while the beast leaped and squirmed. Setting his feet, the Quedak concentrated on the all-important task of pumping a tiny white crystal down the length of his tail and under the beast’s skin.

But this most important of the Quedak faculties was still dormant. Unable to accomplish anything, the Quedak released his barbs, and, taking careful aim, accurately drove his sting home between the black beast’s eyes. The blow, as the Quedak had known, was lethal.

The Quedak took nourishment from the body of its dead foe; regretfully, for by inclination the Quedak was herbivorous. When he had finished, the Quedak knew that he was in desperate need of a long period of rest. Only after that could the full Quedak powers be regained.

He crawled up and down the piles of goods in the yard, looking for a place to hide. Carefully he examined several bales. At last he reached a stack of heavy boxes. One of the boxes had a crack just large enough to admit him.

The Quedak crawled inside, down the shiny, oil-slick surface of a machine, to the far end of the box. There he went into the dreamless, defenseless sleep of the Quedak, serenely trusting in what the future would bring.

PART TWO

I

The big gaff-headed schooner was pointed directly at the reef-enclosed island, moving toward it with the solidity of an express train. The sails billowed under powerful gusts of the northwest breeze, and the rusty Allison-Chambers diesel rumbled beneath a teak grating. The skipper and mate stood on the bridge deck and watched the reef approach.

“Anything yet?” the skipper asked. He was a stocky, balding man with a perpetual frown on his face. He had been sailing his schooner among the uncharted shoals and reefs of the Southwest Pacific for twenty-five years. He frowned because his old ship was not insurable. His deck cargo, however, was insured. Some of it had come all the way from Ogdensville, that transshipment center in the desert where spaceships landed.

“Not a thing,” the mate said. He was watching the dazzling white wall of coral, looking for the gleam of blue that would reveal the narrow pass to the inner lagoon. This was his first trip to the Solomon Islands. A former television repairman in Sydney before he got the wanderlust, the mate wondered if the skipper had gone crazy and planned a spectacular suicide against the reef.

“Still nothing!” he shouted. “Shoals ahead!”

“I’ll take it,” the skipper said to the helmsman. He gripped the wheel and watched the unbroken face of the reef.

“Nothing,” the mate said. “Skipper, we’d better come about.”

“Not if we’re going to get through the pass,” the skipper said. He was beginning to get worried. But he had promised to deliver goods to the American treasure-hunters on this island, and the skipper’s word was his bond. He had picked up the cargo in Rabaul and made his usual stops at the settlements on New Georgia and Malaita. When he finished here, he could look forward to a thousand-mile run to New Caledonia.

“There it is!” the mate shouted.

A thin slit of blue had appeared in the coral wall. They were less than thirty yards from it now, and the old schooner was making close to eight knots.

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