Beyond Annihilation: The End Was Only the Beginning...

Beyond Annihilation by Henry Kuttner - An Earthman and Earthwoman Are Hurled Through Worlds Within Worlds by a Diabolical Weapon!

When I heard the footsteps pause at my cell door, I knew that my month-long imprisonment beneath Administration House was over at last. The realization brought me no elation. I knew too well the fate of prisoners in the “guinea-pig” gallery—human specimens, reserved for scientific experimentation.

As the door slid noiselessly into the opaque glassite wall I saw Orsa, my jailer, flanked by two guards. His red-lidded eyes were blinking rapidly, a trick of his whenever he was inordinately pleased.

“Come out. Falcon,” he said softly, “Degg wants to clip your wings.”

Degg was a renegade scientist, vassal of Marlin, the overlord who had overthrown the government and seized the reins of power on that fateful day of March 4th, 2203 A.D., only a few months ago. And Marlin’s legions, armed with new and powerful weapons of destruction perfected by Degg, had scattered my fleet of air pirates and made me, Paul Dent, the Falcon, a captive.

As I came out of the room blazing agony raced through my arm, and I swung about angrily. Orsa’s heavy-jawed face was twisted in a grin, and the muzzle of the electrogun in his hand glowed redly. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried such a trick. My body bore more than one scar attributable to Orsa.

Orsa barked a command. The guards hustled me the length of the corridor, into an elevator, and along another passage to a bare, metal-lined chamber, obviously an experimental laboratory. The walls were splashed with rusty stains and discolorations; manacled to one of them was a girl.

From televisor portraits I had seen I recognized her as Jan Kenworthy, daughter of President Kenworthy, whom Marlin had killed in his coup d’etat.