Astounding Stories #2

William Gaines ruthlessly forces his partners out of National Cement through stock manipulation and fraud, but when a mysterious scar begins appearing everywhere around him—on his secretary, his employee, even strangers in the street—his guilty conscience spirals into psychological torment. As the visions intensify and close in, Gaines must confront what his own cruelty has wrought, and whether redemption is still possible.

A man wakes on a country road with no memory—and discovers his face has been changed. When he realizes an alien impostor has taken his place at home, complete with his voice and memories, he races to convince the police of an invasion before the spy can complete its mission. It's a race against time to prove his identity and expose the perfect substitution that almost worked.

A farm boy living under the harsh thumb of his guardians finds solace in a precious book about magical escape—and when Mr. McGregor threatens to destroy it, the desperate young man scrapes together money to buy a large mirror, convinced the book holds the secret to his freedom. As McGregor breaks down the attic door to confront him, the boy vanishes without a trace, leaving his guardians to discover the truth behind the tome that inspired his impossible flight.

Marooned on a desolate space station as punishment, technician Prentiss Drew struggles against isolation and despair—until a mysterious woman's voice begins visiting him in his dreams, offering solace and visions of a beautiful world beyond Earth. As the dreams grow more vivid and intimate, the line between imagination and reality begins to blur, leaving Drew to wonder if something impossible might actually be within reach. "Dream On" explores the power of connection across the vast distances of space, where hope itself becomes the most real thing of all.

Clyde Fenton, a withdrawn chemist, rents a spare back room in an apartment building to work undisturbed—only to discover that the space itself seems to amplify his mental powers, driving him toward increasingly ambitious and dangerous schemes. As his mind sharpens within those walls, he becomes obsessed with developing a method to control others, racing against time when the building is condemned for demolition. What happens when Clyde is forced to leave the room that made him feel like a genius?

When T.J. Byrnes reports a holdup attempt to Lt. Kranek, the only clue is a .32 automatic with its serial number scraped away—but the lab discovers that metal retains subsurface impressions, leading Kranek on a trail through the gun's original owner, Gene Middens, to a hotel salesman named Mr. Morse, and finally to the street criminal known as Tough Tony. As Kranek closes in on his suspect, the real evidence emerges from an unexpected place, catching the would-be killer off guard.

Riker Jones, a space pirate operating under secret orders from Earth, leads his mercenary crew on a raid against the planet Xeery to neutralize their military threat and extract cobalt ore as ransom. But Jones's double life—working covertly for Earth Command while maintaining his outlaw cover—begins to unravel when his illness leaves him vulnerable, and a rival officer seizes the moment to turn the tables on him and his entire operation. It's a tense tale of espionage, betrayal, and the price of living between two worlds.

Marshal Bryce Compton, battle-weary commander of Earth's forces, accepts an unexpected truce offer from General Wiera of the enemy Kaka forces during a brutal engagement—but neither side has ever seen what the other truly looks like. When the two leaders finally meet face to face on one of Saturn's moons, a startling revelation forces both commanders to reconsider everything they thought they knew about their long war.

When three Titan missiles mysteriously fail at Cape Canaveral, Captain Atom investigates—only to discover the beautiful Silver Lady from Venus has hypnotized the base personnel with her mesmerizing television broadcasts and alien powers. Now it's up to Captain Adam to stop her influence before she can complete her sinister mission and sabotage America's nuclear deterrent.

Two desperate killers, Slats Redmond and Whitey Loeb, blast out of town after a heist and barrel west in a stolen car—but their distinctive faces make them instantly recognizable to everyone they pass. When they force a young honeymoon couple to ride along as human shields, the police face an agonizing choice: pursue the gunmen or protect the innocent pair caught in the crossfire. As the fugitives race toward the coast, the hunt becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse along the mountain roads.

Richard Trumek, sole survivor of a destroyed Earth cruiser, wakes as a prisoner on the alien world of Lutudana and must navigate a dangerous deception about the planet's true nature before he can warn his fleet. The Lutudanians claim their hostile atmosphere and strange life forms make the world uninhabitable for humans—but Trumek's resourcefulness may be his only chance to escape and expose what's really going on.

Steve Dawson thought he was sneaking aboard a trans-Atlantic rocket ship, but his stowaway gamble lands him on an alien vessel from the planet Andor—and he can't resist accepting an invitation to see their extraordinary world, especially when he spots gold everywhere. When the aliens return him to Earth, Steve discovers that time moves differently in space, and a journey he thought lasted hours has aged his world by a century, leaving him the only person he knew still alive.

In 1280, the tyrannical Duke of Charleux rules from an impregnable fortress—until the clever Count of Allons devises an ingenious solution: the first parachutes, delivered by catapult, to breach the castle's walls. When soldiers begin raining down from the sky, the terrified defenders believe the impossible has happened, and the Duke's seemingly unbreakable power crumbles in panic.