ACE DOUBLE: MONSTERS IN ORBIT / THE WORLD BETWEEN AND OTHER STORIES

Ace pb, 1965. Cover by Jack Gaughan.

Cover by Jack Gaughan - again.

ACE DOUBLE: SPACE CAPTAIN / THE MAD METROPOLIS

Ace books, 1966. Cover by Gray Morrow.

Cover by Jack Gaughan.

ACE DOUBLE: BOW DOWN TO NUL / THE DARK DESTROYERS

Ace Books, 1960. Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

Cover by Ed Valigursky.

ACE DOUBLE: COLLISION COURSE / THE NEMESIS FROM TERRA

Ace books, 1961. Cover by Ed Valigursky.

Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

ACE DOUBLE: SANCTUARY IN THE SKY + THE SECRET MARTIANS

Ace Double paperback, 1960. Cover by Ed Valigursky.

Ace Double paperback, 1960. Cover by Ed Valigursky.

ACE DOUBLE: BEYOND THE SILVER SKY + MEETING AT INFINITY

Ace Double paperback, 1961. Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

Ace Double paperback. Cover by John Schoenherr.

ACE DOUBLE: THE ATLANTIC ABOMINATION + THE MARTIAN MISSILE

Ace Double paperback, 1960. Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

Ace Double paperback, 1960. Cover by Ed Valigursky.

ACE DOUBLE: THE COILS OF TIME + INTO THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

Ace Double paperback, 1964. Cover by Jack Gaughan.

"Dr. Henshaw had created what he thought was a time travel machine and he had sent guinea pigs through it. But now he needed a human guinea pig to test it with. 

Christopher Wilkinson thought the whole idea was absurd, until a book that had been sent through the machine came back with a thumb print on it, the finger print of Vanessa, his long lost sweetheart! 

So Wilkinson agreed to the experiment. He stood in the white circle facing the machine as it began to gleam and spin, pulling him down through the tortuous coils of time...."

Ace Double paperback, 1964. Cover by Ed Valigursky.

"Others called their expedition a "wild ghost chase." But for Space Commodore John Grimes and the beautiful Sonya Verrill who had initiated the project, it was strictly scientific research. Their trip along the rim of the galaxy in search of two men - two dead men - was also an investigation of the long-puzzling phenomenon of the Rim Ghosts. They would do this by penetrating into alternate universes. 

There was only one real problem involved in this study - how to report its results. For once the break-through to an alternate world was achieved, there was no known way of getting out...."

ACE DOUBLE: OFF CENTER + THE RITHIAN TERROR

Ace Double paperback, 1965. Cover by Jack Gaughan.

"The room was quiet; the man in front of the mirror was the only living thing there, and he was too horrified to utter a sound. 

In the mirror, five faces stared back at him: one young and ruddy, which was his own, and four that did not belong in that place at all, for they were wrinkled, malevolent, small as crabapples and blue as smoke. 

So begins Damon Knight's "Be My Guest," a story of the human race possessed by things that were - well, not exactly demons ... but not exactly not demons, either. It's just one of the unpredictable imaginitive tales in this fascinating collection by a modern master of science fiction." 

Contents: 

What Rough Beast

The Second-Class Citizen

Be My Guest

God's Nose

Catch That Martian

Ace Double paperback, 1965. Painting by Jack Gaughan.

"The fate of the Earth Empire hung in the balance - and Security Commissioner Spangler knew it was up to him to find the monster, the Rithian Terror, ans some called it. Seven Rithians had landed on Earth. Six had been disposed of. One was loose. 

Surely, Spangler reasoned, the stereoptic fluroscope would flush it out. "That's one test the Rithian can't meet, no matter how good his human disguise may be." Spangler explained to Pembun, the strange, little Colonial who had been sent to help find the monster. 

But Penbun didn't agree. "The trouble," he said, "is that the Rithi have no bones. Which would be indication enough under a fluroscope, if it weren't for the fact that it can easily swallow a skeleton." 

Spangler Shuddered."

ACE DOUBLE: THE SEARCH FOR ZEI + THE HAND OF ZEI

Ace Double paperback, 1963. Cover by Ed Emshwiller ("Emsh").

"Twenty-five degrees north of the equator on the planet Krishna lies the Banjao sea, the largest body of water on this planet. And in this sea is found the Sunqar, home of legend and mystery.

"Here under the scorching rays of the hot high sun, the beaked galleys of Dur and the tubby round ships of Jazmurian slowly rot in the unbreakable grip of a vast floating continent of sea vine. Even the violent storms of the Krishnan sub-tropics no more than ruffle the surface of the immense floating swamp. Nothing, once caught in this web of weed, can escape..."

Barely had Dick Barnevelt written these words as part of a publicity campaign for his boss, than he learned that he would shortly find himself isolated in the middle of this terrible place on a barbaric planet without the aid of scientific equipment, surrounded by deadly dangers, with an unfulfilled mission and the dire necessity of making an escape he had just declared impossible."

Ace Double paperback, 1963. Cover by Ed Emshwiller ("Emsh").

ACE DOUBLE: THE GATES OF TIME + DWELLERS OF THE DEEP

Ace Double paperback, 1970. Cover art by Josh Kirby.

"They slithered and twittered and jangled, for they were not men. There was only one man - Jarcal - and he was the last of his kind. 

The advancing vacuum of the voids had sucked Jarcal's worlds into nothingness. But the aliens around him denied its existence; they gibbered inanely when questioned. And then, when Jarcal was discovered to be possessed, they most happily cast him out. 

But if Jarcal was possessed, he was also chosen. For the red dancing slippers of the gods led him through a mission to Armageddon...."

Ace Double paperback, 1970. Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

"What! A science fiction novel about science fiction fans? And why not? 

Or - like it says in this novel: 

"Do you really think science fiction fans could save this planet? Could understand this situation and save it?" "I most certainly do," she says. "Who else?" 

Who else, indeed? Not since Frederic Brown's "What Mad Universe" has there been a novel like this."

ACE DOUBLE: NO TIME FOR HEROES + ALICE'S WORLD

Ace Double paperback, 1971. Cover painting by Josh Kirby.

"There's no time for heroes in the present," said General Superhawk, as he was relieved from his laundry duties to head the spaceship's invasion of the untouched-by-human-hands-or-feet planet, which had been dead for 200,000 years. 

"This is absolutely no time for heroes," said the planet's central brain computer which had, in its long, long loneliness, peopled its planet with fabled literary creatures created from its monstrous protoplasma vats. 

"I'm no hero!" screamed the small, fat man with the moustache as he was bullied onto the planet as the ship's Number One scout. But Fate and Old Ironjaw had thrust Bernhard Rordin into the role, and in his own bumbling way, he... 

But see for yourself...."

Ace Double paperback, 1971. Cover painting by Josh Kirby.

"Monteyiller stared at Alice. "This is supposed to be a rescue mission," he said. "There's a girl in danger somewhere on this mad world!" 

She looked covertly at him. "What is it that you want?" 

Monteyiller shrugged. "A city. A government center. Anything, as long as we get out of this." 

Alice was clearly bewildered. She looked from Monteyiller to Cat and back again, her gaze shifting back and forth as she struggled with an unfamiliar thought. Finally, she said, "Which city?" 

Monteyiller kept his face serious with an effort. "Any city," he said. "It's all up to you." 

"Anycity," she repeated. "Oh, I see." She looked out over the lush, rolling landscape, frowning thoughtfully. 

"And please make it a little bit more lively than this bloody place," Monteyiller said, grinning. 

The landscape shifted...."

ACE DOUBLE: THE WRECKS OF TIME + TRAMONTANE

Ace Double paperback, 1967. Cover painting by
Jack Gaughan.

"EARTH ZERO TO EARTH FIFTEEN - WHICH WAS THE REAL ONE? 

What the inhabitants of Greater America didn't realize was that theirs was the only inhabited landmass, apart from one island in the Philippines. They still talked about foreign countries, though they would forget little by little, but the countries were only in their imagination, mysterious and romantic places where nobody actually went. 

That was the way it was on E-3, one of the fifteen alternate Earths that had been discovered through the subspace experiments. 

Professor Faustaff knew that these alternate Earths were somehow recent creations, and that they were under attack from the strange eroding raids of the mysterious bands known as the D-Squads. But there were tens of millions of people on those Earths who were entitled to life and protection - and unless Faustaff and his men could crack the mystery of these worlds' creation and the more urgent problem of their destruction, it would mean not only the end of these parallel planets, but just possibly the blanking out of all civilization in the universe."

Ace Double paperback, 1967. Cover painting by
Jack Gaughan.

"IMMORTAL VENGEANCE 

About TRAMONTANE: 

This fourth science-fantasy novel based on the Finnish legendary epic Kalevala, seemed like a good idea because there are actually four important heroes in these wonderful legends, and this novel completes the cycle, concerning itself with the prophecy of the Great Return when the Vanhat seed shall return to Otava, the planet of their origin. Kullervo is the "bad one" of the legends. Ugly, sullen, despised, he was actually born out of evil. He kicked his cradle to pieces and refused to drown when the wise women flung him into the river. As a vindictive cowherd slave he changed cows into bears and this killed all of Ilmarinen's household. Like Manfred and Oedipus, he was predestined for tragedy and doom. However, he is surely one of the most fascinating characters in all mythology. Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer, chose his tragic life for the theme of his magnificent symphonic tone poem Kullervo, one of his finest works, involving choruses, soloists, and a sweeping Wagnerian nobility. My Kullervo Kasi, a prototype of his ancestor, is the spawn of a leakage from a dark dimensionof matter-energy that is invompatible with the life forces in this one. Therefore, Kullervo Kasi is the natural choice of the Starwitch Louhi to find the tag-end remnants of the Vanhat existing somewhere on despoiled Terra and destroy them...." 

-Emil Petaja.

ACE DOUBLE: THE SHIP THAT SAILED THE TIME STREAM + STRANGER THAN YOU THINK

Ace Double paperback, 1965. Cover painting by Jack Gaughan.

"OPERATION: TIME-SLIP 

Ensign Joe Rate, captain of the experimental Navy yawl Alice, figured that everything that could happen to him in one day had already happened. First, after a freak electrical storm at sea the Alice had somehow been thrown a thousand years back in time, and it looked like they were stranded in the past. They had provisions for two weeks at the most. Then there was the voluptuous barbarian girl they'd saved from captivity - her presence on board a ship full of normal sailors wasn't likely to lessen the problems of the situation. 

Then he saw the four Viking raiding ships bearing straight for him, and in a few minutes the first spear thunked into the Alice's foredeck. 

The ship that sailed the time stream is a novel of madcap adventure in a past much more lively than any historian ever dreamed!"

Ace Double paperback, 1965. Cover painting by Jack Gaughan.

"SECRETS THE WORLD MUST NEVER LEARN 

If you have a friend to whom strange things happen, you can never lack for excitement. And if your friend happens to be the famous Mad Friend of G. C. Edmonson's remarkably authentic accounts of improbable but possible happenings, then you can always count on the unexpected. 

This particular friend had a knack for turning up the unearthly, the off-the-record, the things that were "stranger than science." he could spot a time traveller across a restaurant - and then produce the sort of proof that would be more potent than tequila. He could find just where the meteor fell - and show you that it is not just a rock from space but far, far more ominous. He could... 

But read stranger than you think for yourself and then start looking around your supposedly workaday world. Things may look different!"