Sand Doom

by William Fitzgerald Jenkins

William Fitzgerald Jenkins was an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He used the pseudonym Murray Leinster. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Leinster is credited with the invention of parallel universe stories. The adventure begins, "He sat still. He had been reading, in the passenger lounge of the "Warlock"--a very small lounge indeed--but as a senior Colonial Survey officer he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not go right. He looked up from the bookscreen, waiting. Nobody came to explain the eccentricity of a spaceship using rockets. It would have been immediate, on a regular liner, but the Warlock was practically a tramp. This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service was not yet authorized to the planet ahead, and would not be until Bordman had made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though, the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was something definitely wrong."

58 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 2009

About the author

Alternative name used by Murray Leinster. See also Will F. Jenkins