World Without Chance

by John Russell Fearn

  By degrees, working like divers, they shut the three safety compartment doors one after the other and finally gained the grateful interior of the control room.

  Still space-suited, Arch gave the power to the rocket tubes. The exhaust blasted ice and water in a vast shower.

  Half an hour later the two looked out into the void—but Chameleon Planet was out of sight.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Penal World” by “Thornton Ayre” was originally published in Astounding Stories, September 1937. Copyright © 1937 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Whispering Satellite” by “Thornton Ayre” was originally published in Astounding Stories, January 1938. Copyright © 1938 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Domain of Zero” by “Thornton Ayre” was originally published in Planet Stories, Fall 1940. Copyright © 1940 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “The Degenerates” by “Polton Cross” was originally published in Astounding Stories, February 1938. Copyright © 1938 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “The Misty Wilderness” was originally published in Modern Wonder #77, November 12, 1938, and in Startling Stories, September 1939. Copyright © 1938, 1939 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “World Without Chance” by “Polton Cross” was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1939. Copyright © 1939 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Chameleon Planet” by “Polton Cross” was originally published in Astonishing Stories, February 1940. Copyright © 1940 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2013 by Philip Harbottle.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  British writer John Russell Fearn was born near Manchester, England, in 1908. As a child he devoured the science fiction of Wells and Verne, and was a voracious reader of the Boys’ Story Papers. He was also fascinated by the cinema, and first broke into print in 1931 with a series of articles in Film Weekly.

  He then quickly sold his first novel, The Intelligence Gigantic, to the American magazine, Amazing Stories. Over the next fifteen years, writing under several pseudonyms, Fearn became one of the most prolific contributors to all of the leading US science fiction pulps, including such legendary publications as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Weird Tales.

  During the late 1940s he diversified into writing novels for the UK market, and also created his famous superwoman character, The Golden Amazon, for the prestigious Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. In the early 1950s in the UK, his fifty-two novels as “Vargo Statten” were bestsellers, most notably his novelization of the film, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Apart from science fiction, he had equal success with westerns, romances, and detective fiction, writing an amazing total of 180 novels—most of them in a period of just ten years—before his early death in 1960. His work has been translated into nine languages, and continues to be reprinted and read worldwide.