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Salford is chosen to visit a long dead planet outside the solar system. However, when he gets out of the ship for a look around, he has the distinct feeling he is not alone.

Life on the pioneer planet Orkol was harsh and lonely. Earth settlers found a civilisation of decay, a frustrating shortage of women, outdated machinery and plagues of vicious rodents. The dawn of the green suns gave only a thin eerie light. And the mineral Orkolite produced vibrations that could destroy a planet or shatter a human brain.

Nadia was a girl who had everything except real happiness. She was tired of trying to buy it, and she had just about matured to the point where she knew that nothing was to be gained by deliberately hunting happiness.

She saw the strange Asian in a Paris street market. His inscrutable features were dominated by a pair of mysterious eyes. He was incredible old.

Without knowing why, Nadia purchased a curiously carved wooden casket. The casket contained an oriental miniature, a scroll of curious characters and a phial of glowing blue elixir.

Nadia consulted a number of experts about these strange objects, but not until a psychometric boy handled them did she begin to guess at the terrible truth. She was trapped in a vortex of evil power and 20th-century science seemed unable to save her…

Cobwebs hung in weird, grotesque festoons from the vaulted roof. There was a strange odour in the ancient cellar. A bent figure crouches over forbidden books and mixes indescribably strange ingredients in a cauldron. The cauldron bubbles and foul fumes arise. The alchemist transfers the secret formula to a flask. It travels carefully and ceremoniously from flash to retort and back again. Unnatural things happen in the flask… terrifying things. Suddenly a human figure appears, yet it is not human in all respects. Has the alchemist made this strange, frightening thing, or has it come from realms beyond? The alchemist finds himself involved in a series of breathtaking psychic adventures such as he had never imagined possible even in his wildest dreams.

There are some parts of the world where change comes slowly. There are other placed where it scarcely comes at all. In really remote areas time stands still. The passing of the centuries means no more than the passing of clouds across a leaden sky.

In the wilder regions of eastern Europe and the dark forests of Transylvania ancient derelict castles moulder away in medieval gloom. There are deadly secrets behind the decaying walls.

Karina was running away from the Secret Police. She accidentally stumbled upon the hidden headquarters of a coven of witches, warlocks and necromancers and as a result she found herself pursued by a thing that was not of this world. Karina had three desperate problems; to rescue her lover from the Secret Police; to save her brother from the coven; and to escape from the inescapable.

Xalia was old when the Pyramids were built. Xalia was a woman when Gaza was an untouched coastal plain. Xalia was a woman when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees. She was not alone. There were others like her. Human, yet more than human. Some were good. Others were evil. Others, like Xalia, still retained some human qualities. Even a goddess can fall in love and when she does Time and Space become meaningless. Xalia was prepared to go to any lengths to accomplish her strange purpose. What of those who got in her way? What of those who opposed her? Could Martin Slade resist the advances of a goddess? If not… what would happen to a man who was loved by an Immortal? What happened to those who tried to save him?

The modern mind usually associates witchcraft with the middle ages. We think of witches as Shakespeare depicted them in Macbeth. We see them as secret, black and midnight hags, doing a deed without a name. We close our eyes and immediately the vision of a cauldron filled with foul ingredients appears before us; here are the fenny snake, adder’s fork, wool of bat, scale of dragon and tooth of wolf.

But this does not go far enough back. There was witchcraft in the world long before medieval times. The Witch of Endor who practiced her strange arts in the reign of King Saul is familiar to all students of the Old Testament. The writings of Homer abound with references to witchcraft and sorcery. The very earliest human societies had witch doctors, medicine men, shamans and priests of the black art.

Perhaps so ancient and widespread a cult has some basis in fact. There are powers beyond science. Ancient occult laws will still hold good. It is not wise to cross the path of a being whose age is measured in centuries and whose dark powers can alter the stars in their courses.

The ties of home were strong. In a few years man gets attached to bricks and mortar, and scenery. In a hundred years roots are so deep that no one wants to tear them up. In a thousand years it is quite unthinkable. In a million years, only a lunatic would want to leave…
Then came the alien, presenting an impossible choice… Humanity must leave the Earth – or die! Behind them was everything they had known. In front of them, an unknown to-morrow.
Which were the greater – the hazards remaining or the dangers of the infinite void ahead?
Could they trust the alien?
He said there was another world, a safe world, that would be a new home – but was it all a trap?
There were dangers out there. The dangers of a population confined in ships for a half a life-time; the dangers of cosmic radiation; danger of attacks by the ‘Others’!
Only men of the highest courage and the greatest integrity could hope to survive in the raw, searing savagery of the unknown…

In an age that takes wireless for granted and its beginning to tire of television, it seems incredible that parts of the globe are still unexplored.
Powerful modern steamers connect landmass with landmass, island with peninsula, and archipelago with isthmus. Screaming jets roar through the upper atmosphere, at speeds in excess of a thousand miles an hour.
Yet the mysteries remain. The ancient planet is reluctant to divulge her timeless secrets to the probing, insolent minds of mortal man.
On a remote island, amid weird reef-ridden seas, the Flame Goddess lives on… immortal… undisturbed… alone, save for her primitive worshipers.
And then the white man came…

Is there a Destiny? Does Fate impose a limit? What Barrier stands between man and the creation of life?

Since the legendary failure of the ill-fated Frankenstein, man has tried time and time again to pass those limits. He has created androids, clumsy robots of flesh and blood. He has made men of metal and servants of plastic, with wheels for limbs and magnetic tapes for voices. Man has made things by cross breeding the animal kingdom and destroying Nature’s intentions…but man has never yet made man. Or has he?

Forbisher thought that he had the answer. It wasn’t a clumsy Synthetic. It wasn’t an Android, or a Robot, it was a real flesh and blood human being.

The beautiful woman in his arms was the product of a laboratory experiment, not the result of a natural biological process. But how could he prove it?

Whenever disaster wipes its bloodstained hands on the pages of human history man asks why?
Before the dawn of science primitive man believed in the intervention of weird supernatural powers. Omens were consulted. Oracles were read. Did these things bode good or evil?
Science has explained many of the olden day terrors in terms of ergot poisoning, static electricity, delusion and hypnosis. Some stubborn facts remained unexplained and inexplicable.
Do ghost armies march across the sky while their physical counterparts bleed and die below them? At what strange frontier do fact and fiction blend?
To the terrified watchers below, the thing in the sky looked like a man, carried by a gigantic eagle. But as it descended they could see no space between the man and the bird.

They woke up to the smell of danger. No one could see it. None of them could hear it. But it was there. Lurking… intangible… inaudible… invisible. The space around them was alive with it. They breathed it into their lungs. It crept through the pores of their skins. It was the dreaded presence of X the Unknown.

At first it was just another hoax, another UFO story, but the sightings went on increasing.
It couldn’t be an alien, there had been so many false alarms, dramatic news-columnists had shouted ‘wolf’ so many times, that John Citizen shrugged his shoulders and said ‘nuts’ at the very mention of the word space-ship. Then one of them landed…
The things they did were not exactly friendly. In fact by the time they’d finished, they had made an old-time Viking raid seem like a social call from the vicar…
Many other attacks followed. Day after day and night after night the alien ships screamed in on their mission of death. The earth struck back. But no one could track the aliens to their lair.
They seemed to come from Nowhere. They weren’t Martians. They weren’t Venusians, and they weren’t from another system.
That left only one place where they could have originated… yet the truth was so fantastic that none of the earth governments would take it seriously until it was almost too late.
The enemy came from within! From the gigantic caverns at the earth’s core.

Astra City was a technological 40th century masterpiece. It represented the challenge of society to the raw untamed planet where it raised its gleaming towers in a far-flung corner of the galaxy. Beyond the force field encircling Astra City lay mystery and terror in the form of the weird primeval Greek beasts.
There were other mysteries surrounding Astra City. Mysteries like those the one-eyed Twen discovered in the labyrinth below the modern city. A labyrinth whose age would only be calculated in centuries… but which was believed to have been erected by the distant Masters themselves. Hidden in its depths Twen discovers a forbidden document of the millennial age, which involves her with a secret society who know the dreadful truth about the colonists. They are Androids… and their dawning intelligence leads them into head-on conflict with the rapidly decaying human race.

The Eurasian world of the 24th Century is in the grip of Rajak the Magnificent, one of the most efficiently ruthless totalitarian tyrants ever produced by history. The dreaded security guards are everywhere. The only escape is the time dimension. But what if the Time Vortex breaks down? To what unknown realms – of past, future or probability – will the travellers be transported?

Mike Grafton, on the run from the security forces, finds himself changing places with Benjamin Bathurst, the true life Missing Diplomat of the early 19th Century, who vanished and was never seen again.

What happens to these men, torn from their environments, into unknown realms? Will the Liberationist forces succeed in destroying Rajak the Magnificent? But perhaps the greatest question of all is the possibility of Time Travel: will man ultimately conquer time as he is even know conquering space?

Dan Bellamy was down and out. It seemed that he had reached the end of the road… and then he met the stranger. Who was the mystery man? Why were his amber eyes so powerful? Above all why did he call himself Melchizdek?
The stranger took him to a house, and then the mystery deepened. What was going on in the hidden laboratory? Why were M.I.5 so interested? These men were different. They possessed uncanny mental powers. They had a weird control over matter that was outside any known physical laws. Then Bellamy asked himself the $64,000 question. Was he one of them? And if he was, what were they?
Mutation is well-known, though still only partially understood, biological phenomena. Atomic radiations cause strange changes in the genes and chromosomes of plants and animals. They might also change men…. To find out just how strange these changes would be, you must read “Dawn of the Mutants”. A superb science fiction story – that might be fact.

Krells never set out to be a hero. He was the first to admit he was a trader. “In it for the money; I leave thinking to the experts.” But the experts couldn’t solve the problem of Ralcor IX.

Professional fighters and scientific investigators vanished or were mysteriously destroyed. The robot might of an armoured Bellicose 35 was found shredded like tinsel. Krells still refused to think of himself as hero material – but he wouldn’t quit. Martia, his computer girl, and Galor, the despatch man, stayed with him. For some reason the power that had driven every other terrestrial humanoid off Ralcor IX couldn’t dislodge the traders. Krells groped desperately for a reason. Finding one meant the return of his own people and that meant money. Something he couldn’t understand was shielding him from the Unknown Menace. Suppose he accidentally stopped doing whatever it was that protected him…?

Most people would have become neurotic and quit – not Krells. He didn’t seem to have enough intelligence or imagination to know when to worry.

Anthropologists argue over the significance of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon remains and vast periods of pre-history remain to be filled satisfactorily. These hidden eras of the long-dead past are as open to speculation and mysterious adventure as the unguessed vistas of tomorrow. How many strange, undiscovered species of man have lived and died leaving no apparent record of their existence?

An avalanche on the Swiss-Italian border isolated Marian Sanderson and a frightening assortment of other guests in a peculiar old alpine chateau. Although no human rescue party was able to make the climb, something moved on the precipitous slopes around them.

As Marian gradually discovered the truth about her fellow guests she realised the avalanche had been no accident. Something of terrible potential lurked outside the isolated chateau…

Dark, supernatural forces were poised on the brink of Ultimate Fear…

Psychology recognises the existence of multiple personalities inhabiting the same mind. To the ancients such strange transformations were evidence of demonic possession, and even today there are reputable experts who would not rule out the possibility that something else can take over a human mind.

To the victim of such personality change there are long periods for which the memory cannot account, periods during which the secret enemy is in charge.

Walter Hamilton was a perfectly normal, well-adjusted man in early middle age when strange gaps in his memory first began to worry him. At first he tried to ignore the tell-tale symptoms of schizophrenia but other clues presented themselves.

The face in the crowd scene on a telerecorded film vaguely familiar. It wasn’t his fave… but there were undeniable similarities. A picture in a newspaper worried him more…

Before he could extricate himself he was trapped in a tangled web of interwoven personalities, unable to find himself, powerless to break away from the sinister complications of his two other lives.

The human personality had been defined by leading psychologists as the integrated and dynamic organisation of psychical, mental, moral and social qualities. A personality is the product of heredity and environment. Every experience records itself in the neurons of the brain producing an almost infinite number of possible combinations. Brains are as individual as fingerprints.
In an infinite universe, however, there is a possibility that somewhere – separated by vast distances of Time and Space – two exactly similar brains exist. The strange telepathic bonds between identical twins could operate between identical minds.
Melinda Tracey was a practical, intelligent, modern girl who didn’t believe in dreams – even recurring dreams – but her odd sleep experiences of the ruined city, and the strangely suited figure who searched it, disturbed her considerably.
What incredible psychological bond linked Melinda to the lonely stranger, probing the wreckage of an alien metropolis?

A space liner is a brilliantly designed machine. It is not the kind of thing that disappears without good reason. The Q 97 bound for Alpha Centauri vanished with disquieting suddenness. Stelgen and his crew of expert investigators went in pursuit…and also vanished!
On the other side of Infinity they found a nightmare galaxy where things of incalculable power plotted cosmic evil. Stelgen argued that somewhere, somehow, there had to be an answer to the apparent invincibility of these unbelievably deadly aliens. His problem was to find the answer and get it back to his own people. Trouble was, that someone from the Q 97 was working against him…
When an answer finally presented itself it was so beautifully simple that it needed a genius to see it, and whatever his other qualities Stelgen was not a genius.

Blake had waited a long time for his big chance. Finally the selection board called him in. This was it. He got his promotion, his captain’s ticket and his first assignment. Vorgal was a tough planet but Blake was ready for it. He was the first spaceman to land on Vorgal without crashing. He was the first human being to see a Vorgalian and live. He was the first to learn the planet’s deadly secret an come back alive.

But…when he went into landing orbit around Earth they fired on him. No one would believe that the impossible had happened. They thought Blake’s body was being used by an alien, and unless he could convince them fast he would die. Without his secret knowledge of Vorgal, Earth would die too…

The romantic legend of the Holy Grail is almost without parallel in the stories of chivalry. It has about it a quality of inspiration and a standard of purity that transcends everyday life. It shines like a star through the darkness of the Dark Ages. But what if Satan has his own counterpart? What if – just as the Black Mass of the witches and wizards, is an abominable reversal of the Holy Communion Service of the Christian – what if, then, there is an Unholy grail? A sinister thing of death and terror. A glittering, golden chalice forged in the nethermost chasms of Hell, wrought by the hands of unholy craftsmen. Gilded by demons, decked with gems by jewellers who life with the Prince of Darkness.

A thing that originated below the dark hills where trolls dwell…

That, too, would be the object of many a quest. There would be dedicated heroes searching to destroy it. There would be unscrupulous men who wanted to employ its dark power for their own ends. There would be weak men unable to resist its call. There would be strong men whose wills clashed with the almost irresistible power of the Golden Goblet.

They dragged the screaming stranger into the asylum. His talk of Fire Gods and universal conquest seemed the ultimate in illusions. Next morning, the padded cell was burnt out…and there was no trace of the prisoner. The door was still locked, still barred.

Perhaps the arson that followed was just a coincidence?

The Brigade Chiefs called in a special investigator. No result. Finally the IPF took a hand and subsequently the investigations pointed to extra galactic interference.

When the psychiatrist, who had originally examined the mysterious ‘fire god’, was questioned the second time things began to add up. Those wild, strange words ha not been the ravings of a maniac but the diabolical threat of an alien entity. A thing with unbelievable power…that threatened the universe itself!