Strange Planets #16

Captain Dave Kenton of the Star Patrol accepts a suicide mission as living bait to locate the alien force kidnapping space freighters, only to find a stowaway reporter has compromised his cover—and both are captured by grotesque creature-servants of Amalfa, the disembodied brain of an ancient alien race. Now enslaved and under the telepath's mental control, Kenton must navigate a graveyard of stolen ships while searching for any way to warn the Patrol, even as Amalfa forces him to build weapons that could devastate his own people.

A ruthless farm boy named Talus rises through decades of cunning and brutality to become master of the entire Earth, only to discover that absolute power isolates him in a fortress of fear and suspicion. When those closest to him—including childhood acquaintances—plot to end his reign, Talus must finally confront whether owning everything has left him with anything worth having. This tale of unchecked ambition explores what a man gains and loses in his relentless pursuit of total dominion.

When the spirit Manitou demands the fairest maiden of the Seneca tribe as his annual sacrifice, his choice falls on the beautiful Princess Amala—betrothed to the young brave Umpago, who refuses to accept her fate. As Amala is prepared for the ritual and placed in a ceremonial canoe headed toward the roaring waterfall, Umpago makes a desperate attempt to save the woman he loves, leading to a tragic climax at Niagara Falls that echoes through legend for generations.

Robert Vance spent his lifetime pursuing a scientific invention he believed could end human conflict—but when his long-dead love, Nona, returns to him as a spirit, she guides him to a wondrous realm where all future human creations wait to be discovered. There, a devastating truth awaits about the destiny of his life's work and what it means for mankind's future.

Big Tim Maddox rolls into a Siwash village on Vancouver Island with grand promises for Uma, the chief's daughter—but his real scheme is robbing the tribe's fur traps all summer while they go hungry. When the chief warns him about Rantah, the family totem-god, Maddox laughs it off as superstition; what follows is a tale of greed, betrayal, and the price of dismissing ancient warnings. This pulse-pounding story shows what happens when a white man's ambition collides with forces he refuses to respect.