The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spacehounds of IPC, by Edward Elmer Smith

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Title: Spacehounds of IPC

Author: Edward Elmer Smith

Release Date: March 20, 2007 [EBook #20857]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC ***

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_Beginning a thrilling New Serial of Interplanetary Life and Travel by
Edward E. Smith, Ph.D._

_Author of "Skylark of Space" and "Skylark Three"_

Spacehounds of IPC

_A good many of us, who are now certain beyond a doubt that space
travel will forever remain in the realm of the impossible, probably
would, if a rocket that were shot to the moon, for instance, did
arrive, and perhaps return to give proof of its safe arrival on our
satellite, accept the phenomenon in a perfectly blase, twentieth
century manner. Dr. Smith, that phenomenal writer of classic
scientific fiction, seems to have become so thoroughly convinced of
the advent of interplanetary travel that it is difficult for the
reader to feel, after finishing "Spacehounds of IPC," that travel
in the great spaces is not already an established fact. Dr. Smith,
as a professional chemist, is kept fairly busy. As a writer, he is
satisfied with nothing less than perfection. For that reason, a
masterpiece from his pen has become almost an annual event. We know
you will like "Spacehounds" even better than the "Skylark" series._

Illustrated by WESSO

CHAPTER I

The IPV _Arcturus_ Sets Out for Mars

A narrow football of steel, the Interplanetary Vessel _Arcturus_ stood
upright in her berth in the dock like an egg in its cup. A hundred feet
across and a hundred and seventy feet deep was that gigantic bowl, its
walls supported by the structural steel and concrete of the dock and
lined with hard-packed bumper-layers of hemp and fibre. High into the
air extended the upper half of the ship of space--a sullen gray expanse
of fifty-inch hardened steel armor, curving smoothly upward to a needle
prow. Countless hundred