nightmare tower By Jacques Jean Ferrat Lynne disliked the man from Mars on sight. Yet drawn by forces beyond her control she let him carry her off to the Red Planet. _A new magazine should bring a new name to science fiction--and in this very novel and moving story we believe we are launching a career that will help make 1953 memorable._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe June-July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Lynne Fenlay had had a few headaches in the course of her twenty-four years. But she had never had a headache like this. There had been one as a result of her first field-hockey practice at the seminar, when she was twelve and the hard rubber ball caught her squarely above the left eye. There had been another, five years later, when she had used a guided trip to Manhattan during the Christmas holidays to experiment with a bottle of crême de menthe in the unaccustomed solitude of a hotel room. There had been a third as the result of overwork, while she was adjusting to her job with the group-machine. Each of them had been the result of an easily discovered cause. This headache had come out of nowhere, for no perceptible reason. It showed no signs of going away. Lynne had visited a health-check booth as soon as she could find the time after the discomfort became noticeable. The stamped response on the card had been as disconcerting as it was vague--_Psychosomatic_. Lynne looked across the neoplast tabletop at Ray Cornell and wondered with mild malevolence if her fiancé could be responsible for her discomfort. His spoonful of Helthplankton halfway to his mouth, Ray was smiling at something Janet Downes had said. In her self-absorption Lynne had not heard Janet's remark. Knowing Janet as she did, however, she was certain it had undertones of sex. With his fair height and breadth of shoulder, his tanned good-looking features beneath short-cropped light hair, Ray wore all the outward trademarks of a twelfth-century Viking chief or a twentieth-century football hero. But inside, Lynne thought, he was a Mickey Mouse. His very gentleness, his willingness to adjust, made him easily led. Lynne forced herself to down another spoonful of Helthplankton and thought it tasted exactly like what it was--an artificial compound composed of sea-creatures, doctored up to taste like cereal. Mother Weedon looked down at her from the head of the table and said, "What's the matter, Lynne--don't you feel well?"