Search Results for: time-and-chance

Nobody beats Bar Holliday.
He was paid to find the Terraformable worlds, new planets for his corporation to plunder. Up until the day he came upon Peace Victory, an abandoned generation ship hovering ominously above a definitely habitable planet, he believed nobody ever could.
Nobody beats Bar Holliday.
…because he was never satisfied with anything lower than first place, because he was always the oddball, in charge of his own welfare, his own destiny…a man determined to make his mark in the world and win games at any cost.
NOBODY EVER BEATS BAR HOLLIDAY.
…because he only took the wrong chances at the right times. But on the planet Patmos, where everything looked safe, but nothing was, Bar Holliday had at last met his match!

Few adventures in the annals of spatial conquest have aroused so much interest and speculation as the discovery, some ten years ago, of Cloris 2. Often described nowadays as a small, exotic world of infinite charm, Cloris 2 is regarded as an ideal holiday resort. It now boasts some of the best hotels and playgrounds in the universe, yet no so long ago it was deserted, peopled only by the ghosts of a long dead race.
Belonging to a neighbouring galaxy, Cloris 2 was well outside the exploration range of the vessels of the time, and could only have been visited through a mischance, without hope of return. Such a chance was forced on a handful of people caught up in the mesh of an operation which began long in the past – they had no choice. The discovery of Cloris 2 is one of human courage and the hand of the unexpected, piracy, narrow escapes from alien defence and the ghosts of past tragedy.

Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.

A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna’s first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined – so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.

But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.

Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she’s in for the biggest surprise of all – a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.

Nick Walker can pass for eighteen, which comes in useful while living on the streets. But Nick isn’t eighteen. He’s fourteen. He’s been fourteen for years . . .

A chance encounter with Manta, an exceedingly powerful witch, sees Nick cursed with changelessness. Not only will he never age, but, more usefully to Manta, broken bones and sliced flesh, while excruciatingly painful, will mend themselves in a short space of time – making Nick the perfect weapon against the demonic assassins sent by the evil Cartel. Constantly hunted, Nick is forced to run – evading his enemy when he can and facing gruesome and bloody battles when he can’t.

But, help comes from a surprising source – April, a young girl Nick rescues from some occult enthusiasts intent on sacrificing her, has powers beyond her control or understanding. Together, might they be a match for the sinister forces that stalk them?

Orthe – half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe’s leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.And on a goodwill tour to the outlying provinces, these evil rumors turn to deadly accusations. Christie is no offworlder, Church officials charge: she is a treacherous and cunning descendant of Orthe’s legendary Golden Witchbreed – the cruel, ruthless race that once enslaved the whole planet. Suddenly, Christie finds herself a hunted fugitive on an alien world, where friend and foe alike may prove her executioners. And her only chance of survival lies in saving Orthe from a menace older than time…

Gods’ Magic, Mortal’s Doom… In a land where magic is real, where elves and dragons menace the unwary, and where the Norse gods wage a deadly campaign, using mortals as their favourite pawns, Loki, god of deception, and Freyr, god of war, are locked in a battle that could tip the universal balance toward order or eternal chaos. Searching the alternate timeways, Freyr has reached out to snatch Al Larson, twentieth-century American soldier, from the midst of a fire-fight in Vietnam, flinging him through time and space into the body of an elvish warrior to stand against Loki and his sorcerous ally, Bramin. Torn from a world where bullets and grenades are the weapons of choice, and locked into an elvish body on a world where sword and spell are the means of battle, Al must adapt swiftly – or die. For the gods have marked him as their own private battleground, and Al’s only chance rests in completing the quest Freyr has set him, a quest that will lead him to the very gates of Hel, where he must save a god – or destroy one!

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.

But now the Zardalu are back . . .


The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu – just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown – free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp.


The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens – and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu.


But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate – and the plans – of the Builders themselves.