Space Station 1

Space Station 1 by Frank Belknap Long

Space Station 1 opens as Lieutenant David Corriston fights for his life in total darkness aboard a ship bound for Earth's orbiting Space Station, disarming an unseen knife-wielding killer in a cargo hold. The struggle began earlier that evening in the passenger cabin, where Corriston, newly assigned to the Station as an inspection officer, struck up a conversation with a beautiful young woman traveling incognito. Her companion, Jim Clakey — actually a bodyguard traveling under the name Henry Ewers — indiscreetly reveals to Corriston that she is Helen Ramsey, daughter of Stephen Ramsey, the ruthless magnate who has seized Mars's uranium claims from the original colonists. When Helen fails to return from the ladies' lounge, Clakey is struck down and killed by a poisoned Martian barb in full view of the passengers. Corriston searches for Helen but finds no trace of her, and Captain Sanders, after a full inspection of the ship, refuses to believe she was ever aboard, since no "Ramsey" appears on the passenger list. Branded a space-shock case, Corriston is confined to a psychiatric ward aboard the Station. He survives a second attack by poisoned barb, then breaks out, evades a Security Guard, and hides in the Master Sequence Selector compartment. There he hears Helen's voice and climbs through a grate to find her being manhandled by an unseen assailant who tears a strange mask from her face before fleeing. Carrying the unconscious Helen, Corriston reports to Commander Clement, who initially seems to believe him — but returns from investigating to declare the whole story a hallucination, and orders Corriston back into custody under armed guard. Corriston overpowers his guard and discovers the astonishing truth: the guard's face was a sophisticated, emotion-responsive plastic mask concealing a different identity beneath. Realizing that Ramsey has replaced the Station's entire command staff with impostors wearing these masks, Corriston disguises himself in a guard's uniform and confronts "Commander Clement" at gunpoint just as a U.S. naval cruiser under Admiral Hayes arrives to force the Station's surrender, following the radioactive crash of a freighter smuggling unstable uranium — a disaster implicating Ramsey and the Station's commander in criminal collusion. Overhearing the impostors' panicked plans to flee to Mars with Helen as leverage against her father, Corriston strikes a bargain: he will testify on their behalf if they let him accompany Helen aboard the departing Mars ship. Reunited with Helen, he learns from her the full truth — she staged her own disappearance using one of the Ramsey-developed masks and a plastic-clothing disguise to escape her stifling, overprotected life, only to be caught up in real danger when Ewers was murdered. As the Mars ship prepares to depart, Hayes's cruiser opens fire on the Station; Corriston and Helen survive the bombardment, which the impostor commander manages to repel. But at the ship's boarding ramp, a real killer — Richard Henley, leader of the desperate Mars colonists — guns down the impostor commander and his officers and takes Corriston hostage to pilot the ship to Mars, holding Helen as ransom leverage against her father. During the fourteen-day voyage, Henley reveals that the colonists bribed their way into infiltrating the Station and that the real Commander Clement and other officers are imprisoned somewhere aboard it. After landing, Corriston overpowers his other captor, Stone, learns Helen is being held under armed guard aboard the ship, and sets out alone across the lethal Martian desert to reach the mining colony for help. Despite near-collapse from exposure and dehydration, Corriston persuades the assembled colonists that Henley is exploiting them for personal ransom rather than their cause, winning over the crowd through argument and a few decisive fistfights. A column of 210 armed colonists in caterpillar tractors sets out across the desert toward the ship, accompanied by Dr. Drever and his stowaway son Freddy. During the journey, discussion turns to the deadly native lamprenes — parasitic worm-like creatures with poisonous suckers — and the column encounters a man being devoured by them in the sand, prompting a rescue effort as the narrative continues toward the ship and the looming confrontation with Henley.

By Frank Belknap Long · First published 1957 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller · 22 chapters · 58,810 words

First lines

INTRIGUE IN EARTH'S OUTER ORBIT

Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors.

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science fiction · space exploration · future technology · interstellar travel · humanity · alien encounters · space station · adventure · suspense · cosmic horror · extraterrestrial life · colonization

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