Produced by Greg Weeks, Andrew Wainwright and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net HUNTERS OUT OF SPACE By JOSEPH E. KELLEAM ILLUSTRATED by FINLAY CHAPTER 1 In Kansas, spring usually falls on the day before summer. It had been such a day, and now at midnight I was sitting at my desk. Both hands of the clock were pointing to the ceiling--and to the limitless stars beyond. My wife and daughter had long been asleep. I had stayed up to write a few letters but it was not a night for working. Although it was a bit chilly outside, the moon was bright and a bird was singing a glad and plaintive song about the summer that was coming and all the summers that had passed and all that would be. Adding, here and there, a bit of melody about all the good things that happen to birds and men without their knowing why. Both hands of the clock were pointing upward. And I was half-asleep, and half-dreaming. Remembering all the friends I had--most of them scattered to the four winds by now. And that best friend of all, Doctor Jack Odin! I wondered where he was and how he had fared since he disappeared into that dark cave in Texas. Suddenly I became aware of a flickering light above me. I looked up. I had thought that the lights were winking, but they were not. The room was lit by a reading lamp, and the ceiling was so shadowy that at first I could see nothing at all. Then I saw the light--or the ghost of a light--gleaming faintly upon--or through--the ceiling. It was the faintest yellow, neither a bull's eye nor a splotch. Instead, it seemed to be a tiny whirlpool of movement--the faintest nebula in miniature with spirals of light swiftly circling a central core. For a second I thought I could see through the roof, and the stars swarmed before me. It was as though I was at the vortex of a high whirlwind of dancing, shining specks of light. Then that sensation was gone, and there were two faint coiling spirals of yellow light upon the ceiling. The lights began to whisper. "We are Ato and Wolden," they said. "Remember us?" I remembered them from the notes that I had pieced together to tell the story of my old friend, Doctor Jack Odin, and his adventure in the World of Opal. It seemed impolite to tell them that we had never met. So I listened.