Astounding Stories #12

Pete Allen and Harvey Hunter, top government photographers, embark on a daring expedition to document the unmapped upper Colorado River and Grand Canyon—only to encounter something impossible: hostile Native Americans, thousands of buffalo, and a Confederate Army officer claiming it's 1864. As the bewildered explorers are brought before Chief Crazy Bear, they must grapple with the baffling mystery of how an unconquered Indian tribe and the remnants of the Civil War still exist in what should be 1956 America. With execution looming at dawn, Pete Allen devises a desperate escape plan—but in a place where history itself seems to have taken a different path, survival may depend on understanding the truth behind this impossible world.

Ranger Captain Mike Cullen leads an Earth task force to occupy KL 9, a planet feared as a potential threat, only to find its male scientists surprisingly peaceful—but its women far more formidable than anyone anticipated. As Cullen's platoon settles in to observe the planet while the fleet refuels, the women of KL 9 execute a calculated strategy that turns the tables on Earth's would-be conquerors. What begins as a routine security mission becomes something neither side saw coming.

When Doctor Dineen rescues a wounded warrior from the planet Zol, he discovers that the enemy his people have been taught to despise is far more human—and far more intriguing—than any propaganda suggested. As their initial distrust gives way to connection, Dineen finds himself caught between his duty to Earth and an impossible choice that will reshape the course of an interstellar war.

When a dynamite blast traps three miners—Andy Clarke, Kipper Smith, and Mike Rutlik—140 feet underground in a remote northern mine shaft, a desperate 33-hour rescue effort unfolds across the nation's headlines. The searchers reach the chamber only to find the men have vanished without a trace, sparking a mystery that captivates the country and draws federal investigators, television cameras, and even the President's attention. Days later, Clarke and Smith reappear with an extraordinary tale of where they've been—one that no one believes until events force a reckoning no one expected.

A test pilot chasing higher speeds in an experimental rocketmobile begins experiencing vivid hallucinations set in colonial Australia—visions of thieves, prison ships, and pirates—while simultaneously striking up a chess correspondence with a mysterious Australian millionaire named Robert Hamilton. As the strange fantasies intensify and Hamilton's letters abruptly cease, the pilot takes leave from his rocket trials and travels to Sydney to confront his enigmatic pen pal, only to discover an impossible truth that calls everything into question. Bill must unravel the connection between his high-speed experiments, his recurring visions, and a man who's been dead for over a century.

In "The Striped Ones," Tim Kilray, Laura Rawlins, and Jonathan Jaynes find themselves hunted by cat-like aliens who seek to transform the most vulnerable among them into their striped kind. As the line between human and alien blurs, the trio must resist a terrifying assimilation that threatens to erase their very selves.

Bill Hodges finds himself in an impossible situation when a woman in Australia claims he's the spitting image of her great-great-grandfather—a man deported for theft who later became a celebrated fighter against pirates. Grappling with the shocking revelation, Hodges retreats to puzzle out whether he's somehow traveled through time or slipped into another dimension entirely. Like an unfinished chess match, the mystery may never be solved, leaving him trapped between past and present with no clear answer.

When pilot Dave Lawson and his co-pilot struggle to keep their cargo plane aloft through a brutal storm, a young boy named Tommy wakes from a vivid nightmare claiming his father has crashed—and knows details no dream should contain. As the search unfolds, what seemed like a child's frightened imagination becomes something far stranger, pointing rescuers toward the exact location where they're needed most.

Elwin Hanson, a overlooked office worker, drifts into a mysterious bookshop on Christmas Eve seeking solace—only to be handed a peculiar volume by a cryptic storekeeper who somehow knows his deepest wish to feel young and vital again. As Elwin loses himself in the book's pages, reality begins to shift in ways he never could have anticipated, blurring the line between fantasy and truth in this clever five-page tale from *Astounding Stories*.