
Dan Elliot has finally paid off his dream ship, the Space Needle II, but his celebration in a grimy Venusian bar quickly turns violent. A sudden brawl leaves him bloodied and unconscious, only to awaken in an upscale office where a corpulent official and his hulking enforcer await. They reveal they know he witnessed the legendary Dragonbird in the jungle and want him to guide them to the creature, promising a lucrative payout—and a subtle threat to his pilot’s license.
Caught between a mysterious entity that may be flesh, metal, or something beyond, and the calculating Commissioner Housten Blayne, Elliot must decide whether to betray the jungle’s sacred secret or risk his newfound freedom. The story blends gritty barroom scuffles with the lure of an otherworldly hunt, setting the stage for a tense trek through Venus’s exotic shadows where every alliance is suspect.
Language
en
Duration
~23 minutes (22K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2021-06-24
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

b. 1935
A major voice in modern science fiction, this prolific writer helped shape the genre with work that ranges from fast-paced early stories to thoughtful, award-winning novels and novellas. Readers often return to his fiction for its big ideas, psychological depth, and sense of wonder.
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