Search Worlds Without End

A courtesan for hire, a brainless hunk, and alien invaders combine to bring about ancient history's most momentous catastrophe in John Jakes's hilarious take on the fall of Atlantis

For centuries the mystery of the lost continent of Atlantis has intrigued mortals everywhere. Who lost it? Where did it go? At last the truth is out--or at least the truth according to Hoptor the Vintner, respectable Atlantean wine merchant and not-so-respectable pimp.

According to Hoptor, the blame for Atlantis's destruction can be placed squarely on the incredibly broad shoulders of Conax the Chimerical, a none-too-bright, broadsword-wielding barbarian chieftain. Conax washed ashore just as Atlantis's ruler was losing his health and his grip on the kingdom, creating chaos throughout the island. Now things were really about to go south. All of a sudden Hoptor had a lot more to worry about than how to silence the unrelenting nagging of Aphrodisia, the beautiful, strident prostitute he had promised to marry in a moment of weakness. Now the ever-resourceful, vino-loving procurer of female flesh was being called on to possibly save the world as well as his own skin--which would prove to be no small feat, with Conax mucking up everything he touched in his inimitable fashion. And then there were those strange golden discs flying high above everybody's heads...

The United States has become so overpopulated that a tenth of its people have no home. Instead, they spend their lives on the highway. With all of the dangers of the road, dropping below forty miles per hour would mean certain death--even for men like Billy Spoiler. The clans of the open road spend their lives battling each other for control of the freeway, and the Spoilers are no exception. They never give up, never pull over, and never take their hand off the throttle.

Afraid that the disappearance of the space ship and crew commanded by his father will jeopardize his own career, Rob takes time off from space school to investigate the circumstances of the case.

The planet Missouri rang with the news...

BUFFALO YUNG IS IN TOWN!

"I have seen him," said Dr. Buster Levinsohn, "and he appears to be the genuine article. Atrocious grammar. Mustaches to here. Plus those pearl-handled beauties he carries. And those hovering black harpies of the Pit- those three easy riders who follow him everywhere to scrape up his victims."

"I also have heard," Buster observed to Pacifist Zak Randolph, "that he's calling you out."

Can off-worlder Randolph score against the Gunslinger of the Galaxy, the Terror of Extra-terrestrial Space, the Killer of the Cosmos?

Right faces Might in the future world of SIX-GUN PLANET.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (The Best of John Jakes) - essay by Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander
• 13 - Machine
• 17 - from 'On Wheels' (excerpt)
• 34 - Political Machine
• 51 - The Sellers of the Dream
• 90 - The Highest Form of Life
• 102 - One Race Show
• 130 - Love Is a Punch in the Nose
• 141 - There's No Vinism Like Chauvinism
• 185 - Recidivism Preferred
• 198 - Here Is Thy Sting
• 248 - A John Jakes Bibliography - essay by Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander

When Andreas Law regains consciousness he stares grimly at the words written in blood on the walls of his cell.

I AM A PSYCHEDELIC PROJECTOR
I AM A WEAPON OF ATTACK AND ASSASSINATION
I AM GOING TO KILL THEM BEFORE THEY MAKE ME KILL AGAIN

His blood, his writing. He is elated for their brainwashing techniques haven't succeeded - yet!

But it is only a matter of time. He is still a prisoner. He could still be forced to use his strange, terrible power - and start a war that would obliterate the universe!

THE FOURTH DIMENSION had finally been opened up, thanks to the invention of the Time Gate. Now man could journey into the dim past or venture into the far-distant future. But the Time Gate had to be kept a top-secret project, manned only by Tom and Cal Linstrum and a few carefully selected scientists--for in the wrong hands, it could become the most potent weapon yet created.

Traveling through time, even one man could alter history enough so that everyone on Earth would simply cease to exist. Of course, it would never happen because only a madman would even try to distort the time stream. Then one horrifying day, it did happen. And Tom and Cal found themselves chasing through a rapidly changing panorama of history, trying desperately to capture their enemy before they and their whole world vanished forever...!

Mask of Chaos

On the masked world, the law is the deepest secret.

Mike was apprehensive about being stranded on Tome. But the peaceful city and the exquisite masks everyone wore somehow allayed his fears. The sculptured expressions of tranquility and the ghostly, frail smiles lulled him into serenity.

He soon compared his plight on Tome to a sojourn in Eden--until Mike met a flame-haired woman with an apple. She taught him to see the horror behind the masks, to look beyond what people and things "seem" to be.

But then again, he wasn't what he seemed to be. He didn't need a mask. He was a mask.

The Star Virus

They stole the focus of futurity.

We demand that you hand over the object.

Impossible. Ownership is in the hands of our clients.

Human ownership of the object is not admissible. Streall claim is absolute. You will notify of where-abouts.

It is already in transit.

We will intercept. Notify.

You claim must be made through the courts.

Human courts mean nothing to the Streall. Either you comply or Streall fleets will occupy the Kantor system.

Tonight We Steal the Stars

In II Galaxy, only Wolf Dragonard can make the impossible possible.

The Wagered World

The astronauts didn't know they were betting the Earth on the toss of the dice!

"My road lies southward, southward to golden Khurdisan; it is the working of the fates that my road lies that way."

In the endless wastes of the northern steppes, beyond the craggy lands of the Ice-marches, strange legends were told of fabled Khurdisan. In those savage lands Brak the Barbarian lived and fought, until he mocked his people's warlike gods once too often, and the shamans cast him out.

But his banishment was not entirely grim. He had a destination -- the great crescent-shaped land of Khurdisan that stretched nearly from the Pillars of Ebon in the west to the Mountains of Smoke where the world ended in the east. He would fight his way there, if need be, through the splendour and sorcery of the realms that lay between.

And now, his quest scarely begun, he faces the ageless, undying enmity of Yob-Haggoth, the Dark One, and of his Amyr of Evil, Septegundus of the lidless eyes and the crawling flesh.

"The road is long to Khurdisan, Barbarian. Beware of Septegundus. I will be there!"

Brak the Barbarian, outcast from the wild northern steppes of his own people, journeyed southward to golden Khurdisan.

He rode alone through a world of savagery and sorcery, relying on his swordsmanship and his barbaric strength for protection. But far greater than the threat of man or beast was the menace of Septegundus, Amyr on Earth of the great evil, Yob-Haggoth the Dark One.

Already Brak has escaped once from a hideous death before the stone idol. But the arm of Septegundus was long, his powers of sorcery unmeasured. Would Brak ever reach his goal among the fabled cities of Khurdisan?

"We go to the dark. We ride to the awful dark. A stranger leads us, a savage man. His presence brings the evil down!"

The soothsayer's grim words chilled the hearts of the travellers. Even the iron nerves of Brak the Barbarian twanged with foreboding. For in the traders' caravan as it crossed the wasteland of Logol he was the savage, the stranger. Though his strength and swordsmanship might protect the caravan from attacks by brigands or wild beasts, even from the ruby-eyed warriors of Quran, he was as helpless as any against the menace of supernatural powers.

And as first one, then another of the travellers fell prey to the horror that stalked them, Brak knew that he must find a weapon more powerful than his sword if he too was not to be discovered drained of blood and bones, a dry husk bearing the three black marks, the triangular Mark of the Demons.

In When the Idols Walked, Brak arrives at the edge of the roaring sea, seeking a ship to carry him to Khurdisan. But before he can find passage, his caravan is set upon by slavers who chain the great warrior to an oar. With each stroke he plots his revenge. Brak's tormentors will be destroyed, but he will find that the sea holds greater horrors than a slavedriver's whip.

Table of Contents:

• Devils in the Walls - (1963) - shortstory
• Ghoul's Garden - (1973) - novelette
• The Girl in the Gem - (1965) - shortstory
• Brak in Chains - (1977) - novella
• The Mirror of Wizardry - (1968) - novelette

Earth faces final doom from another dimension, and Gavin Black is her only defender! The Gate of Darkness stood open between the worlds, and the men of Earth faced invasion - from Earth! Gavin Black, newsman, ex-soldier, found himself drafted by unseen forces to wage war against that other Earth, and the barbaric hordes that threatened to overwhelm his world. He dared not refuse. But he found a love, a woman from the other world, and now it was impossible for him to NOT refuse!

Gavin Black stands as Earth's only defender against the Masters of the Klekton!

In the tenth age of the star kings of II Galaxy... in that far off day of a far off future when mankind has spread beyond the Home Cluster, there was a man called Dragonard. Dragonard the Beast some called this fallen warrior of the immortal Lords of the Exchange who ruled and owned a million worlds. But Dragonard the Last Hope thought others when the terrible rumor spread that the star kings were finally dying. Dragonard did not know what to believe until he found himself torn from his prison, turned loose on a strange planet as a human weapon to be plunged into the heart of a cosmic mystery. But whose weapon was he? And what was his real mission? And above all how could he free himself to act for the real good of the people?

On a post-apocalyptic world far from Earth, Magus Blacklaw, a traveling mountebank, is in trouble with the law. He and his daughter soon fall in with a young man, and pretty soon all three are condemned to ride a skysled to exorcize the demons of a formerly commercial sister planet.

Caesar, the ape born in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, is being kept in a circus but comes to resent the human exploitation of apes so much that, with the help of a sympathetic and all too symbolic black man, he incites his fellow primates to revolt. The apes are victorious over the humans after a bloody battle, thus laying the groundwork for the future situation found in The Planet of the Apes.