THE RED PLANET
Russ Winterbotham
A Science Fiction Novel
MONARCH BOOKS, INC.
Derby, Connecticut
Published in August, 1962
Copyright © 1962 by Russ Winterbotham
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Cover Painting by Ralph Brillhart
Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC.,Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut, and represent the worksof outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction especiallychosen for their literary merit and reading entertainment.
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
REVENGE IN AN ALIEN WORLD
When Gail Loring chose Bill Drake to be her husband—in name only—forthe duration of the flight to Mars, she didn't know that she had justsigned his death warrant.
Jealous Dr. Spartan, leader of the expedition, swore to get revenge andforce Gail to share his maniacal plan for power.
Bound together in space, five men and a woman strained against thepowerful tug of twisted emotions and secret ambitions.
But all plans were forgotten when they landed on the Red Planet andencountered the Martians—half animal, half vegetable—with acid forblood and radar for sight.
When the Martians launched an assault against the spaceship, linkingtheir electrical energy in an awesome display of power, Spartanrealized that this was the perfect moment for personal revenge—andtouched off his own diabolical plan of destruction against his fellowcrewmen....
Chapter 1
I got no sleep that Thursday night. I tossed and dozed and tossedagain. Operation Jehad and Willy Zinder were on my mind. OperationJehad was the designation given to the proposed first manned flight toMars, and Willy was our last chance to fill the six-man crew.
If Willy didn't make it, Doc Spartan would be fit to be tied in ahangman's knot. More than anything else, he had insisted on a six-mancrew and, if he couldn't get six qualified astronauts, includinghimself, on the Jehad ship, he was as likely as not to postpone thevoyage for 26 months, when Mars would be in the right spot again and bywhich time more men could be trained.
While I rolled and tossed in my bed sheets, Willy Zinder was playingcarousel in his Jupiter capsule three hundred miles above old MommaEarth. And I hated to speculate about what had happened to him. WhenI'd watched him get into the cherry-picker Thursday morning, he'd beena poor, frightened kid. He'd probably been suffering ever since. Andnow, after this dreadful night, re-entry was staring him in the face.
Feeling scared was natural and nothing to be ashamed of, because we allgot butterflies on our first solo orbit. But when I took my ASD tests,I'd managed to keep my teeth from chattering. Willy hadn't and somehowI got the feeling that he was suffering as much as all the rest ofus combined. He looked so ready to collapse that I wondered what washolding him up.
Finally I gave up trying to sleep. It was daylight anyhow and Idressed, hurried to a restaurant and had scrambled eggs and coffee.Then I went over to the reservation to see how things were going. Dr.Spartan probably had spent the night there, but the rest of us hadknocked off when the midnight operations shift came on duty. If they'dall spent a nig