Science Fiction U N E NO TRUCE WITH KINGS a new short novel by POUL ANDERSON RICHARD MATHESON VANCE AANDAHL JACK VANCE / I L • ,vi y V.. r i / J. m Including Venture Science Fiction No Truce With Kings {short novel) POUL ANDERSON 5 Books AVRAM DAVIDSON 59 Pushover Planet CON PEDERSON 65 H. KERR 70 Starlesque {verse) > WALTER Green Magic JACK VANCE 71 Science: The Light That Failed! ISAAC ASIMOV 84 The Weremartini VANCE AANDAHL 95 Ferdinand Feghoot: LXIII GRENDEL BRIARTON 102 Bokko-chan shin’ichi HOSHI 103 Tis The Season To Be Jelly RICHARD MATHESON 107 Another Rib JOHN J. WELLS and MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY 111 There Are No More Good Stories About Mars . {verse) BRIAN W. ALDISS 127 In this issue , , . Coming next month 4 F&SF Marketplace 128 Index to Volume XXIV 130 Cover by Emsh {illustrating "No Truce With Kings”) Joseph W. Ferman; publisher Avram Davidson, executive editor Isaac Asimov, science editor E' ’ LtMkrman, managing editor Yo f> The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, V oiutne 44. No. 6,^ Whole No. 145, June 1963. Published monthly by Mercury Press, Inc., at 404 a copy. Annual subscription $4.50 in U. S. and Possessions, $5.00 in Canada and the Pan American Union; $5.50 in all other countries. Publication office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H. EditoHal and general mail should be sent to 347 East 53rd St,, New York 22; N. Y. Second Class postage paid at Concord, N. H. Printed in U. S. A. © 1963 by Mencury Press, Inc. AH rights, including translations into other languages, reserved. Submissions must be accom- panied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes ; the Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts. In this issue . ... is FOUL Anderson’s complete short novel, illustrated by Ed Emsh’s vivid cover, in which a future — and fragmented —Amer- ica fights for its spiritual as weU as its physical integrity. MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY and collaborator JOHN JAY WELLS take a daring and unusual theme, treat it with logic and dignity. VANCE AANDAHL shows that the fury of a man scorned can equal that of any woman. RICHARD MATHESON engages in a fantastic reductio ad ahsiirdem. Here for the first time are; SHINICHI HOSFH, Japan’s leading SF author, with a wry tale of a robot B-girl; JACK (The Dragon Masters') VANCE, looking beyond the old, old magics of black and white; and CON PEDERSON— the missing man—whose story of a pair of planet-plunderers and their comeuppance makes us wish he weren’t. Coming next month . is part one of ROBERT A. HEINLEIN’s latest novel, GLORY ROAD. Suppose you were a young, vigorous veteran of a not-quite-- war, with no very close ties and no immediate plans . suppose you picked up a newspaper and saw an ad which seemed tailor- made for you . would you let the fact that it said HERO WANTED dissuadevou from applying? If so, you’d be missing the greatest Adventure m the Twenty Universes. GLORY ROAD has everything which niZ’" iobert A. Heinlein pre-eminent in the field, and yet it is unlike any other Heinlein book we have ever read. As an hors d’oeuvre to the main course, and as proof that we are Never Afraid To Experiment, we offer next month (for the very first time) a Letters Column. We may never offer it again. It all depends. See you aboard. 4 Introduction to Poul Anderson's NO TRUCE WITH KINGS Foul Anderson, once we had thrown one of our famous hammer- locks onto him and threatened to snap his slender frame like a cheese-straw unless he divulged some personal details for this space, replied and said: “Age, 36; one wife, one child, one house, one car, one third of a largish houseboat (the other thirds belong to Jack "Vance and Frank Herbert, or will when we finish building it [in San Francisco Bay] . Trained as a physicist but drifted into writing. Like to read, talk, drink beer, sail, listen to Bach, build things, hike, travel—all in all, a pretty bourgeois type, lucky enough not to have to put up ivith the drawbacks of bourgeoisie such as neckties, commuting, and office politics.” The author of (among many other things) THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS (F6-SF, Sept.-Oct., 1953 [Doubleday, 1961]) and PROG- RESS (FirSF, Jan. 1962) also translates Skaldic verse from the Old Norse, is with his brother co-founder of the Danish Imperialist Party of the United States (membership: two), Karen’s husband, AstrirTs father; and a keen student of medieval, modern, and—as here witness—future history. The America of this short novel is in many ways reminiscent of the Japan of the Early Mefi Restora- tion— the rifle sharing honors with the bow, feudal lords and central government in uncertain balance, alien powers trying to impose alien patterns. But title and principle are Western, rather than Eastern. All we have of freedom, all we use or know— / This our fathers bought for us long and long ago,” wrote Kipling. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— / Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law— // Lance and torch and tumult, steel and greygoose wing, / Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King. The King, the Leader, the Party, the Revolu- tion . Tyranny has many names. Freedom needs but one. 5 NO TRUCE WITH by Poiil Anderson Ancient and Unteachable, abide—abide the Trumpets! Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground- swell brings Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets— Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings/—Rudyard Kipling “Song, Charlie! Give’s a song!” towers and rain-rush in the court- “Yay, Charlie!” yards, an undertone that walked The whole mess was drunk, and through the buildings and down the junior officers at the far end of all corridors, as if the story were the table were only somewhat nois- true that the unit’s dead came out ier than their seniors near the of the cemetery each September colonel. Rugs and hangings could Nineteenth night and tried to join not much muffle the racket, the celebration but had forgotten shouts, stamping boots, thump of how. No one let it bother him, fists on oak and clash of cups here or in the enlisted barracks, raised aloft, that rang from wall to except ma)'be the hex major. The stony wall. High up among shad- Third Division, the Catamounts, ows that hid the rafters they hung was known as the most riotous from, the regimental banners gang in the Army of the Pacific stirred in a draft, as if to join the States of America, and of its regi- chaos. Below, the light of brack- ments the Rolling Stones wffio held eted lanterns and bellowing fire- Fort Nakamura were the wildest. place winked on trophies and “Go on, boy! Lead off. You’ve weapons. got the closest thing to a voice in Autumn comes early on Echo the whole goddamn Sierra,” Col- Summit, and it was storming out- onel Mackenzie called. He loos- side, wind-hoot past the watch- ened the collar of his black dress 5 ’ NO TRUCE WITH KINGS 7 tunic and lounged back, legs rus, not noticing when the colonel asprawl, pipe in one hand and knocked out his pipe and rose. beaker of whisky in the other: a thickset man with blue wrinkle- "The guns go booml Hey, meshed eyes in a battered face, his tiddley booml cropped hair turned gray hut his The rockets vroom, the ar- mustache still arrogantly red. rows zoom. “Charlie is my darlin’, my dar- From slug to slug is damn lin’, my darlin’,” sang Captain small room. Hulse. He stopped as the noise Get me out of here and hack to abated a httle. Young Lieutenant the good old womb I Amadeo got up, grinned, and (Hey, doodle dee dayO" launched into one they well knew. All right-thinking Catamounts "1 am a Catamountain, I guard maintained that they could oper- a border pass. ate better with the booze sloshing And every time I venture out, up to their eardrums than any oth- the cold will freeze m — er outfit cold sober. Mackenzie ig- nored the tingle in his veins; for- “Colonel, sir. Begging your par- got it. He walked a straight line to don.” the door, automatically taking his Mackenzie twisted around and sidearm off the rack as he passed looked into the face of Sergeant by. The song pursued him into the Irwin. The man’s expression hall. shocked him. “Yes?” "For maggots in the rations, we “1 am a bloody hero, a decorated hardly ever lack. vet: You bite into a sandivich and The Order of the Purple Shaft, the sandivich bites right with pineapple clusters yeti" back. The coffee is the finest grade of “Message just come in, sir. Ma- Sacramento mud. jor Speyer asks to see you right The ketchup's good in combat, away.” though, for simulating blood. Speyer, who didn’t like being (Cho-orus!) drunk, had volunteered for duty The drums go bump I Ah- tonight; otherwise men drew lots tumpty-tumpl for it on a holiday. Remembering The bugles make like Ga- the last word from San Francisco, bri’l’s trump — Mackenzie grew chill. The mess hawled forth the cho- Lanterns were far apart in the 8 VANTASV AM) SCIKN'CE t-'ICTION passage. Portraits of former com- color with tlieir dresses as they manders watched the colonel and waited to see the colonel about the sergeant from eyes that were some problem down in the Vil- hidden in grotesque darknesses.