The Project Gutenberg EBook of Master of the Moondog, by Stanley Mullen

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Title: Master of the Moondog

Author: Stanley Mullen

Release Date: February 19, 2010 [EBook #31327]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1952. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
this publication was renewed.

MASTER of the MOONDOG

By STANLEY MULLEN

_Idiotic pets rate idiotic masters. Tod Denver and Charley,
the moondog, made ideal companions as they set a zigzag
course for the Martian diggings--paradise for fools._

* * * * *

It was Charley's fault, of course; all of it....

Temperature outside was a rough 280 degrees F., which is plenty rough
and about three degrees cooler than Hell. It was somewhere over the
Lunar Appenines and the sun bored down from an airless sky like an
unshielded atomic furnace. The thermal adjustors whined and snarled
and clogged-up until the inside of the space sled was just bearable.

[Illustration]

Tod Denver glared at Charley, who was a moondog and looked like one,
and Charley glared back. Denver was fond of Charley, as one might be
of an idiot child. At the moment they found each in the other's
doghouse. Charley had curled up and attached himself to the instrument
panel from which be scowled at Denver in malignant fury.

[Illustration]

Charley was a full-grown, two yard-long moondog. He looked like an
oversized comma of something vague and luminous. At the head end he
was a fat yellow balloon, and the rest of him tapered vaguely to a
blunt apex of infinity. Whatever odd forces composed his weird
physiology, he was undoubtedly electronic or magnetic.

In the physically magnetic sense, he could cling for hours to any
metallic surface, or at will propel himself about or hang suspen