Download or read book The Stellar Legion written by Leigh Brackett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one had ever escaped from Venus’ dread Stellar Legion. And, as Thekla the low-Martian learned, no one had ever betrayed it and—lived. Leigh Brackett was the undisputed Queen of Space Opera and the first women to be nominated for the coveted Hugo Award. She wrote short stories, novels, and scripts for Hollywood. She wrote the first draft of the Empire Strikes Back shortly before her death in 1978.

Download or read book The Stellar Legion written by Leigh Brackett and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2020-04-24 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one had ever escaped from Venus' dread Stellar Legion. And, as Thekla the low-Martian learned, no one had ever betrayed it and—lived.

Download or read book The Dumarest eBook Collection written by E.C. Tubb and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together the first six titles in E. C. Tubb's epic SF saga, Dumarest, containing: The Winds of Gath Derai Toyman Kalin The Jester at Scar Lallia

Download or read book The Woman From Altair and Other Stories written by Leigh Brackett and published by www.PulpFictionBook.Store. This book was released on 2023-02-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Woman From Altair and Other Stories – two classic novelettes of interstellar love and betrayal, and one story about simple betrayal by Leigh Brackett. The Woman From Altair (1951) – Ahrian was a fragile creature – yet beneath her feminine softness lurked the steel purpose of bitter dedication! Chapter I – Ahrian Chapter II – Stranger on Earth Chapter III – Gifts of Love Chapter IV – Star Dreams Chapter V – About Altair Chapter VI – The Last Magic The Stellar Legion (1940) – No one had ever escaped from Venus’ dread Stellar Legion. And as Thekla the low-Martian learned, no one had ever betrayed it——and lived The Last Days of Shandakor (1952) – An Earthman finds love and tragedy in a long-dead city of ancient Mars that denies death. A novelette in six chapters.

Download or read book PLANET STORIES Collection no 1 Winter 1940 Spring 1941 written by Leigh Brackett and published by Edizioni Savine. This book was released on 2020-05-17 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strange adventures on other worlds – The universe of future centuries Stories: Beyond Light - (Planet Stories Winter 1940) The Stellar Legion - (Planet Stories Winter 1940) The War-Nymphs of Venus - (Planet Stories Spring 1941) Satellite of Fear - (Planet Stories Spring 1941) 4-1/2B, Eros - (Planet Stories Spring 1941)

Download or read book Dead Weight written by E.C. Tubb and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Falkirk, Captain of the World Police and stationed at the World Council building in New York, has a special interest in investigating the sudden and inexplicable death of Angelo Augustine, the brother of his girl friend. A messenger employed by the Council, Augustine was also a spy in the pay of Senator Rayburn, a fanatical Nationalist who is fighting both to retain his power and to destroy the Orient before they, as he believes, turn against the Occident. Augustine had died while delivering a parcel containing a statue of a Buddha for an employee of Senator Sucamari of the Japanese Legation, and who, in his own way, is as fanatical as Rayburn himself. Sucamari wants to gain living room for the teeming millions of the Orient, and his secret plan involves the releasing of a deadly bacterial plague across the Americas. The bacteria is contained in a special coating on the Buddha statue, but when the statue is stolen by a petty criminal, millions of people hover on the brink of agonizing death, unless Falkirk can find the criminal in time . . .

Download or read book The Genetic Buccaneer written by E.C. Tubb and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE HAND OF DR KAIFENG By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-race - that was the ideal of many scientific Utopians. By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-army - that was a dream of many military commanders. By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a horde of obedient but brilliant monsters - that was the scheme of Dr. Kaifeng. For Cap Kennedy, the abduction of a dozen leading geneticists spelled trouble for Earth. For their trails led not to some idealist, or to some would-be Napoleon, but pointed only at the one man in the galaxy who might prove to be more powerful than the legions of Terra themselves.

Download or read book The Citadel of Lost Ships written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Dragon Queen of Venus written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempting to make Venus safe for colonists turns out to be a very dangerous job for Tex and his partner Breska.excerptTex stirred uneasily where he lay on the parapet, staring into the heavy, Venusian fog. The greasy moisture ran down the fort wall, lay rank on his lips. With a sigh for the hot, dry air of Texas, and a curse for the adventure-thirst that made him leave it, he shifted his short, steel-hard body and wrinkled his sandy-red brows in the never-ending effort to see.A stifled cough turned his head. He whispered, "Hi, Breska."The Martian grinned and lay down beside him. His skin was wind-burned like Tex's, his black eyes nested in wrinkles caused by squinting against sun and blowing dust.For a second they were silent, feeling the desert like a bond between them. Then Breska, mastering his cough, grunted: "They're an hour late now. What's the matter with 'em?"Tex was worried, too. The regular dawn attack of the swamp-dwellers was long overdue."Reckon they're thinking up some new tricks," he said. "I sure wish our relief would get here. I could use a vacation."Breska's teeth showed a cynical flash of white."If they don't come soon, it won't matter. At that, starving is pleasanter than beetle-bombs, or green snakes. Hey, Tex. Here comes the Skipper."Captain John Smith-Smith was a common name in the Volunteer Legion-crawled along the catwalk. There were new lines of strain on the officer's gaunt face, and Tex's uneasiness grew.He knew that supplies were running low. Repairs were urgently needed. Wasn't the relief goin' to come at all?But Captain Smith's pleasant English voice was as calm as though he were discussing cricket-scores in a comfortable London club."Any sign of the beggars, Tex?""No, sir. But I got a feeling. . . .""H'm. Yes. We all have. Well, keep a sharp. . . ."

Download or read book Child of the Sun written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eric Falken couldn't run any more. At least he'd led the Hiltonists away from the pitiful starving holes where his people hid, on the outer planets and barren asteroids and dark derelict hulks floating far outside the traveled lanes.ExcerptEric Falken stood utterly still, staring down at his leashed and helpless hands on the controls of the spaceship Falcon.The red lights on his indicator panel showed Hiltonist ships in a three-dimensional half-moon, above, behind, and below him. Pincer jaws, closing fast.The animal instinct of escape prodded him, but he couldn't obey. He had fuel enough for one last burst of speed. But there was no way through that ring of ships. Tractor-beams, criss-crossing between them, would net the Falcon like a fish.There was no way out ahead, either. Mercury was there, harsh and bitter in the naked blaze of the sun. The ships of Gantry Hilton, President of the Federation of Worlds, inventor of the Psycho-Adjuster, and ruler of men's souls, were herding him down to a landing at the lonely Spaceguard outpost.A landing he couldn't dodge. And then . . . .For Paul Avery, a choice of death or Happiness. For himself and Sheila Moore, there was no choice. It was death.The red lights blurred before Falken's eyes. The throb of the plates under his feet faded into distance. He'd stood at the controls for four chronometer days, ever since the Hiltonists had chased him up from Los Angles, back on Earth.He knew it was because he was exhausted that he couldn't think, or stop the nightmare of the past days from tramping through his brain, hammering the incessant question at him. How?How had the Hiltonists traced him back from New York? Paul Avery, the Unregenerate recruit he went to get, had passed a rigid psycho-search-which, incidentally, revealed the finest brain ever to come to the Unregenerate cause. He couldn't be a spy. And he'd spoken to no one but Falken.Yet they were traced. Hiltonist Black Guards were busy now, destroying the last avenues of escape from Earth, avenues that he, Falken, had led them through.But how? He knew he hadn't given himself away. For thirty years he'd been spiriting Unregenerates away from Gantry Hilton's strongholds of Peace and Happiness. He was too old a hand for blunders.Yet, somehow, the Black Guards caught up with them at Los Angles, where the Falcon lay hidden. And, somehow, they got away, with a starving green-eyed girl named Kitty . . . ."Not Kitty," Falken muttered. "Kitty's Happy. Hilton took Kitty, thirty years ago. On our wedding day."A starving waif named Sheila Moore, who begged him for help, because he was Eric Falken and almost a god to the Unregenerates. They got away in the Falcon, but the Hiltonist ships followed.Driven, hopeless flight, desperate effort to shake pursuit before he was too close to the Sun. Time and again, using precious fuel and accelerations that tried even his tough body, Falken thought he had escaped.But they found him again. It was uncanny, the way they found him.Now he couldn't run any more. At least he'd led the Hiltonists away from the pitiful starving holes where his people hid, on the outer planets and barren asteroids and dark derelict hulks floating far outside the traveled lanes.And he'd kill himself before the Hiltonist psycho-search could pick his brain of information about the Unregenerates. Kill himself, if he could wake up.He began to laugh, a drunken, ragged chuckle. He couldn't stop laughing. He clung to the panel edge and laughed until the tears ran down his scarred, dark face.

Download or read book Enchantress of Venus written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few men have gone beyond that barrier, into the vast mystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back.Excerpt The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea, through the shrouding veils of mist, her sail barely filled by the languid thrust of the wind. Her hull, of a thin light metal, floated without sound, the surface of the strange ocean parting before her prow in silent rippling streamers of flame.Night deepened toward the ship, a river of indigo flowing out of the west. The man known as Stark stood alone by the after rail and watched its coming. He was full of impatience and a gathering sense of danger, so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it.The steersman lay drowsily over his sweep. He was a big man, with skin and hair the color of milk. He did not speak, but Stark felt that now and again the man's eyes turned toward him, pale and calculating under half-closed lids, with a secret avarice.The captain and the two other members of the little coasting vessel's crew were forward, at their evening meal. Once or twice Stark heard a burst of laughter, half-whispered and furtive. It was as though all four shared in some private joke, from which he was rigidly excluded.The heat was oppressive. Sweat gathered on Stark's dark face. His shirt stuck to his back. The air was heavy with moisture, tainted with the muddy fecundity of the land that brooded westward behind the eternal fog.There was something ominous about the sea itself. Even on its own world, the Red Sea is hardly more than legend. It lies behind the Mountains of White Cloud, the great barrier wall that hides away half a planet. Few men have gone beyond that barrier, into the vast mystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back.Stark was one of that handful. Three times before he had crossed the mountains, and once he had stayed for nearly a year. But he had never quite grown used to the Red Sea.It was not water. It was gaseous, dense enough to float the buoyant hulls of the metal ships, and it burned perpetually with its deep inner fires. The mists that clouded it were stained with the bloody glow. Beneath the surface Stark could see the drifts of flame where the lazy currents ran, and the little coiling bursts of sparks that came upward and spread and melted into other bursts, so that the face of the sea was like a cosmos of crimson stars.It was very beautiful, glowing against the blue, luminous darkness of the night. Beautiful, and strange.There was a padding of bare feet, and the captain, Malthor, came up to Stark, his outlines dim and ghostly in the gloom."We will reach Shuruun," he said, "before the second glass is run."Stark nodded. "Good."The voyage had seemed endless, and the close confinement of the narrow deck had got badly on his nerves."You will like Shuruun," said the captain jovially. "Our wine, our food, our women-all superb. We don't have many visitors. We keep to ourselves, as you will see. But those who do come..."He laughed, and clapped Stark on the shoulder. "Ah, yes. You will be happy in Shuruun!"It seemed to Stark that he caught an echo of laughter from the unseen crew, as though they listened and found a hidden jest in Malthor's words.Stark said, "That's fine.""Perhaps," said Malthor, "you would like to lodge with me. I could make you a good price."He had made a good price for Stark's passage from up the coast. An exorbitantly good one.Stark said, "No.""You don't have to be afraid," said the Venusian, in a confidential tone. "The strangers who come to Shuruun all have the same reason. It's a good place to hide. We're out of everybody's reach."He paused, but Stark did not rise to his bait. Presently he chuckled and went on, "In fact, it's such a safe place that most of the strangers decide to stay on. Now, at my house, I could give you..."

Download or read book Black Amazon of Mars written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grimly Eric John Stark slogged toward that ancient Martian city-with every step he cursed the talisman of Ban Cruach that flamed in his blood-stained belt Behind him screamed the hordes of Ciaran, hungering for that magic jewel-ahead lay the dread abode of the Ice Creatures-at his side stalked the whispering spectre of Ban Cruach, urging him on to a battle Stark knew he must lose!ExcerptThrough all the long cold hours of the Norland night the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before Eric John Stark had brought him into the ruined tower and laid him down, wrapped in blankets, on the snow. He had built a fire of dead brush, and since then the two men had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars.Now, just before dawn, Camar the Martian spoke."Stark.""Yes?""I am dying.""Yes.""I will not reach Kushat.""No."Camar nodded. He was silent again.The wind howled down from the northern ice, and the broken walls rose up against it, brooding, gigantic, roofless now but so huge and sprawling that they seemed less like walls than cliffs of ebon stone. Stark would not have gone near them but for Camar. They were wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them.The big Earthman glanced at Camar, and his face was sad. "A man likes to die in his own place," he said abruptly. "I am sorry.""The Lord of Silence is a great personage," Camar answered. "He does not mind the meeting place. No. It was not for that I came back into the Norlands."He was shaken by an agony that was not of the body. "And I shall not reach Kushat!"Stark spoke quietly, using the courtly High Martian almost as fluently as Camar."I have known that there was a burden heavier than death upon my brother's soul."He leaned over, placing one large hand on the Martian's shoulder. "My brother has given his life for mine. Therefore, I will take his burden upon myself, if I can."He did not want Camar's burden, whatever it might be. But the Martian had fought beside him through a long guerilla campaign among the harried tribes of the nearer moon. He was a good man of his hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what he was doing. They were friends.

Download or read book The Beast Jewel of Mars written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wise men of Caer Dhu were not so wise. They found the secret of Shanga, and they escaped their wars and their troubles by fleeing backward along the path of evolution.Excerpt Burk Winters remained in the passenger section while the Starflight made her landing at Kahora Port. He did not think that he could bear to see another man, not even one he liked as much as he did Johnny Niles, handle the controls of the ship that had been his for so long.He did not wish even to say goodbye to Johnny, but there was no avoiding it. The young officer was waiting for him as he came down the ramp, and the deep concern he felt was not hidden in the least by his casually hearty grin.Johnny held out his hand. "So long, Burk. You've earned this leave. Have fun with it."Burk Winters looked out over the vast tarmac that spread for miles across the ochre desert. An orderly, roaring confusion of trucks and flatcars and men and ships-ore ships, freighters, tramps, sleek liners like the Starflight, bearing the colors of three planets and a dozen colonies, but still arrogantly and predominantly Terran.Johnny followed his gaze and said softly, "It always gives you a thrill, doesn't it?"Winters did not answer. Miles away, safe from the thundering rocket blasts, the glassite dome of Kahora, Trade City for Mars, rose jewel-like out of the red sand. The little sun stared wearily down and the ancient hills considered it, and the old, old wandering wind passed over it, and it seemed as though the planet bore Kahora and its spaceport with patience, as though it were a small local infection that would soon be gone.He had forgotten Johnny Niles. He had forgotten everything but his own dark thoughts. The young officer studied him with covert pity, and he did not know it.Burk Winters was a big man, and a tough man, tempered by years of deep-space flying. The same glare of naked light that had burned his skin so dark had bleached his hair until it was almost white, and just in the last few months his gray eyes seemed to have caught and held a spark of that pitiless radiance. The easy good nature was gone out of them, and the lines that laughter had shaped around his mouth had deepened now into bitter scars.

Download or read book The Jewel of Bas written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-11-05 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quest to the Mountain of Life to save what remained by humanity from the machines that were bent on destroying them.excerptMouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it. She sniffed and said: "You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next town.""Uh huh," Ciaran grunted lazily.Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes."I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food," she said sullenly.Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy gray eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, "It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat and lazy."Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint of gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.Mouse said suddenly, "Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of Life?"

Download or read book Thralls of the Endless Night written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the freezing night the great ship held mysterious secrets, secrets that the Piruts and the Hans wanted.Excerpt Wes Kirk shut his teeth together, hard. He turned his back on Ma Kirk and the five younger ones huddled around the box of heat-stones and went to the doorway, padding soft and tight with the anger in him.He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully."I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their families."His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled, "Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to freeze?" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the socking child. She added sharply, "Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.""Who's to hear it?" Kirk raised his heavy over-lids and let his pupils widen, huge liquid drops spreading black across his eyeballs, slicking the dim grey light into themselves, forcing line and shape out of blurred nothingness. He made no move to drop the curtain.The same sandscape he had stared at since he was able to crawl by away from the box of heat-stones. Flat grey plain running and left to the little curve of the horizon. Rocks in it, and edible moss. Wind-made gullies with grey shrubs thick in their bottoms, guarding their sour white berries with thorns and sacs of poisoned dust that burst when touched.Between the fields and the gullies there were huts like his own, sunk into the earth and sodded tight. A lot of huts, but not as many as there had been, the old ones said. The Hans died, and the huts were empty, and the wind and the earth took them back again.Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.Beyond the Hans quarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were the Engineers. Not many of them anymore. You could see the rusty lumps where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.And beyond the Engineers - the Officers.The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.

Download or read book Last Call for Sector 9G written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-12-10 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out there in the green star system; far beyond the confining grip of the Federation, moved the feared Bitter Star, for a thousand frigid years the dark and sinister manipulator of war-weary planets.ExcerptMartie said monotonously, "There is someone at the door sir shall I answer? There is someone at the door sir shall I-"Durham grunted. What he wanted to say was go away and let me alone. But he would only grunt, and Artie kept repeating the stupid question. Artie was a cheap off-brand make, and bought used and he lacked some cogs. Any first class servall would have seen that the master had passed out in his chair and was in no condition to receive guests. But Artie did not, and presently Durham got one eye open and then he began to hear the persistent knocking, the annunciator being naturally out of order. And he said quite clearly."If it's a creditor, I'm not in.""-shall I answer?"Durham made a series of noises. Artie took them for an affirmative and trundled off. Durham put his face in his hands and struggled with the pangs of returning consciousness, He could hear a mutter of voices in the hall. He thought suddenly that he recognized them, and he sprang, or rather stumbled up in alarm, hastily combing his hair with his fingers and trying to pull the wrinkles out of his tunic. Through a thick haze he saw the bottle on the table and he picked it up and hid it under a chair, ashamed not of its emptiness but of its label. A gentleman should not be drunk on stuff like that.Paulsen and Burke came in.Durham stood stiffly beside the table, hanging on. He looked at the two men. "Well," he said. "It's been quite a long time." He turned to Artie. "The gentlemen are leaving."Burke stepped quickly behind the servall and pushed the main toggle to OFF, Artie stopped, with a sound ridiculously like a tired sigh. Paulsen went past him and locked the door. Then both of them turned in to face Durham.Durham scowled. "What the devil do you think you're doing?"Burke and Paulsen glanced at each other as though resolve had carried them this far but had now run out, leaving them irresolute in the face of some distasteful task. Both men wore black dominos, with the cowls thrown back."Were you afraid you'd be recognized coming here?" Durham said. A small pulse of fright began to beat in him, and this was idiotic. It made him angry. "What do you want?"Paulsen said in a reluctant voice, not looking at him, "I don't want anything Durham, believe me." Durham had once been engaged to Paulsen's sister, a thing both of them preferred not to remember but couldn't quite forget. He went on, "We were sent here." Durham tried to think who might sent them. Certainly not any of the girls; certainly not any one of the people he owed money to. Two members of the Terran World Embassy corps, even young and still obscure members in the lower echelons, were above either of those missions.

Download or read book Time Hole written by Clifford D. Simak and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going back 50,000 years in time, opportunists found "Mastodonia" to make millions selling access to their country and its resources._x000D_ Second Childhood:_x000D_ Achieving immortality is only half of the problem. The other half is knowing how to live with it once it's been made possible—and inescapable!