The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Hiding Place, by Richard R. Smith

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Title: No Hiding Place

Author: Richard R. Smith

Release Date: June 29, 2009 [EBook #29272]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Turnabout may not always be fair play in the gulfs between the
stars. But so destructive and malicious are the Agronians of this
story that we can readily forgive Richard Smith for filling their
ship with an unexpected reversal of a victory technique almost too
ghastly to contemplate. We have no sympathy for them--and neither
has Mr. Smith. Still, we're rather glad he decided to make human
heroism the cornerstone of a most exciting tale of conflict in
space._

no
hiding
place

_by ... Richard R. Smith_

The Earth was enveloped in atomic fire and the ship was
a prize of war. But disaster may make victory mandatory.

The ship leaped toward the stars, its engines roaring with a desperate
burst of energy and its bulkheads audibly protesting the tremendous
pressures.

In the control room, Emmett Corbin listened to the screech of tormented
metal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailed
his nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried out in pain.

Despite the agony, his gaze did not waver from the video set across the
room. In the screen, Earth was a rapidly diminishing orb, charred and
mottled with glowing atomic fires.

_Everything_, a far corner of his mind whispered. _Everything on Earth
is dead!_

He was a carpenter and luckily, he had been working inside the
barricades of an Army spaceport when the news came that the enemy had
broken through the defense ring beyond Pluto. He had continued nailing
the cedar siding on the building, knowing that if he stopped his work
and waited, he would start screaming.

An MP running by the building several minutes later had shouted at him,
urging him to board one of the ships on the landing field. In those last
hours, they had loaded