Astounding Stories #21

Captain Adam Chase of the Exploratory Space Patrol has discovered what seems to be the perfect world for human colonization—Mentalla II, a planet with Earth-like conditions and breathtaking natural beauty. But as he explores the landscape, he becomes increasingly fascinated by a massive, eerily human-shaped rock formation that dominates the terrain, and his closer investigation reveals something that challenges everything he thought he understood. A desperate man in an asylum now begs a skeptical journalist to believe his account of what happened next, insisting the world needs to know the danger he encountered.

In "Two Weeks with Pay," Hobbs returns from vacation with a quiet intensity that baffles his coworkers. After a summer of fabricating wild tales about his travels, this year he’s been truly elsewhere—captured by aliens—and now he won’t say a word about it.

In the misty coastal town of New England, vacationing engineer Tom Cargill stumbles into a strange mystery when he meets eccentric researcher Dr. Oswald. When the doctor attempts a daring experiment with the occult, he unleashes the vengeful spirits of a long-dead pirate crew, turning the quiet seaside village into a battleground of spectral chaos—until a mysterious protector known only as Magicman arrives to restore order.

A third vice-president with cooked books spots an incoming efficiency audit and hatches a desperate scheme: he'll bribe the auditor with a thousand-dollar bet to fake a plane crash and disappear into the wilderness for a week, buying himself time to doctor the records. But when the auditor proves unmovable and the trap is sprung, Everett Simpson discovers that some snares close far tighter than he bargained for.