THE STAR-MASTER By RAY CUMMINGS Docile, decadent Venus was easy pickings for that twenty-first century Hitler's dream of cosmic empire. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] My name is Arthur Frane. You who read this story now, of course are familiar with momentous events into which I was unexpectedly plunged--momentous for all mankind. I write this narrative now to add the true details to what you have all read and heard blared by the newscasters around the world. I have been extolled as a hero although I did nothing except try to keep from getting killed. I was twenty-six years old last summer, in June of 2003, when fate so strangely brought Venta and me together. My family is wealthy, as you have heard. Do not envy me for that. An income of ten thousand decimars, however nice it may seem in theory, is in reality no advantage to a young man of twenty-six. I am a big blond fellow whom the newscasters have been pleased to call Viking-like and handsome as a god. I'm much obliged. But whatever truth there is in it, that too has been a disadvantage. The weird events began in July, last summer, when with Jim Gregg I went hunting in that Adirondac forest. Jim and I were in Government College together. I left to spend my income and become a dawdler--the disadvantage of money; and Jim joined the Crime Prevention Bureau of the New York Shadow Squad. We got a one-day hunting permit. Jim took his official crime-tracker equipment, with an extra flash-gun for me; we flew to the Adirondac mountain slope which our permit named and hopefully set out on foot to try our luck. But we had no luck. A few birds, which even the minimum pencil-ray flash had all but burned to a crisp, were all we had bagged. Evening came, with twilight settling so that the forest glades were deepening into purple. And then suddenly it seemed that we heard a rustling in the underbrush--a rustling which ought to be a deer. We crouched in a thicket, waiting. The sound stopped. "Let's try the listener," I whispered. Jim got out his little eavesdropping gadget. But he had no time to connect it. The rustling began again. It was obviously up a short slope no more than a hundred feet from us--some wild animal which seemed now to be retreating. "I'll take a chance," I muttered. "If that's a deer, we'll lose it if I can't drill it now." We knew it could not be a human, since our permit for today barred anyone else from the twenty square miles of Government preserve allotted to us. I fired at the sound, with my violet pencil-flash eating through the underbrush at the top of the slope.