One Was Stubborn

  SELECTED FICTION WORKS

  BY L. RON HUBBARD

  FANTASY

  The Case of the Friendly Corpse

  Death’s Deputy

  Fear

  The Ghoul

  The Indigestible Triton

  Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep

  Typewriter in the Sky

  The Ultimate Adventure

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Battlefield Earth

  The Conquest of Space

  The End Is Not Yet

  Final Blackout

  The Kilkenny Cats

  The Kingslayer

  The Mission Earth Dekalogy*

  Ole Doc Methuselah

  To the Stars

  ADVENTURE

  The Hell Job series

  WESTERN

  Buckskin Brigades

  Empty Saddles

  Guns of Mark Jardine

  Hot Lead Payoff

  A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s

  novellas and short stories is provided at the back.

  *Dekalogy: a group of ten volumes

  Published by

  Galaxy Press, LLC

  7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

  Hollywood, CA 90028

  © 2013 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.

  Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.

  Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.

  Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Cover art; “One Was Stubborn” and “A Can of Vacuum” story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. “240,000 Miles Straight Up” story illustrations and Story Preview cover art: © 1948 Standard Magazines, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-601-9 EPUB version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-777-1 Kindle version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-370-4 print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-244-8 audiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927676

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  ONE WAS STUBBORN

  A CAN OF VACUUM

  240,000 MILES STRAIGHT UP

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STORY PREVIEW

  THE GREAT SECRET

  L. RON HUBBARD IN THE

  GOLDEN AGE OF

  PULP FICTION

  THE STORIES FROM THE

  GOLDEN AGE

  GLOSSARY

  FOREWORD

  Stories from

  Pulp Fiction’s

  Golden Age

  AND it was a golden age.

  The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.

  “Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.

  The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.

  In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.

  Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”

  Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.

  In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.

  Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.

  Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a w
riter, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.

  This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.

  Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.

  L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.

  Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.

  —Kevin J. Anderson

  KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!

  One Was Stubborn

  Author’s Note

  This present manuscript is a paraphrase of one which is very strange indeed. I have included in it all its essentials and have removed from it only that which was rambling and incoherent. The original came to me in the hands of a peculiar old fellow who was admitted for treatment to Balm Springs. He had a very stubborn quality about him which made him nearly impossible to treat, and this intractability earned for him the pseudonym of Old Shellback among the interns and psychiatrists.

  Oddly, he came with no past history and refused to give any. No one could learn, for some time, where he had been born or whether he had any people alive. And then, one day, with a rock-jawed glare at my insistence, he said:

  “My mother and father have yet to be born. If I have any ancestors living in this country now I am positive I won’t see them. The place I was born will not be built for another three hundred years and, when I was born in it, it was already two hundred and fifty years old. It is gone because it has yet to exist. It will be gone thereafter because it will cease to exist.

  “I am a negative five hundred and ninety years old. Tomorrow, my birthday, I shall be a negative five hundred and eighty-nine. I have less than thirty years of life expectancy remaining to me and so I shall not live to be more than a negative five hundred and sixty years.

  “What has happened to me has happened because of what happened to the Universe. But mainly because there is but one god and his name will be George Smiley.

  “You haven’t tried to make me do anything. Therefore I shall give you the manuscript which explains this. I wrote it when I was marooned a little while, about eighty years from now, in Paris just after the United States began to rebuild it.”

  And so he brought me the manuscript. It had evidently been written under stress, for the first half-dozen pages are illegible as compared to the graceful script of the remainder.

  Old Shellback grew restless after he had been with us six or seven months, for he seemed to sense danger in all clocks. In fact a man had only to take out a watch and Old Shellback would dive for his cubicle and refuse to come forth the rest of the day. Then he began to mutter, over and over, “Not far enough back. Not far enough back. Not far enough back.” Nothing could be found as the cause of this, but Old Shellback seemed to think the menace quite valid. And then one day he came rushing into my office—it was a New Year’s Day—and demanded his original manuscript which, of course, I gave him. I had no thought of what he might do and what he did was quite startling.

  Old Shellback was seen to lock himself into his room. There was no egress therefrom.

  An hour later, when he would not respond, we forced the door.

  On the bed was a scrawled note:

  “My apologies to Dr. LaFayette. But this is not far enough back, you see. Not far enough back!”

  Old Shellback was gone!

  One Was Stubborn

  I thought it was my vision.

  For some time my wife had been nagging me about glasses, telling me that I ought to get those Brilloscopes that were always being advertised on the three-dimensional color television. But somehow the more I heard “See like a cat and feel like a million with Brilloscopes, the Invisible Optic Aids,” the less inclined I was to get a pair.

  And so when I beheld a pair of legs walking toward me all by themselves, I, of course, concluded that it was my vision. In fact, for some days things had been getting slightly misty and the mist was deepening. But to see a pair of legs with pants neatly pressed and shoes precisely tied walk up to you and by you and around the corners—well, even I could see that I must give in.

  I stepped onto the express conveyer belt and went whizzing off toward the Medical Center, and as I sped along I again received a shock. The great glistening domes of Science Center, usually so plainly seen from all levels of the city save the third trucking tier under the glass subways, were missing one of their number. I supposed, of course, that the Transstellar Express might have swished too close to it on the night before, but I was wrong. For when I diverted my eyes for a moment to avoid being struck by a fat woman’s antigravity cane and then looked through the invisible super-levels at the place where the dome had been, the dome was back in place! I certainly did need glasses!

  I was so groggy when I stepped off the conveyer belt and grabbed the scoop which lifted up to the medical department level that I didn’t even see a crazy college student swing off Level 20 in his antique Airable Swishabout—one of those things with signs over the dents saying, “Eve, Here’s Your Atom,” and “Ten Tubes All Disintegrating,” and “Hey, Babe, didn’t we meet on Mars?” You know the menace. Well, one of those blasted straight at me and I didn’t even have time to duck—and I probably couldn’t have anyway, thanks to my rheumatism.

  And if I had been startled before, I was prostrate now. That Swishabout rattled to the right and left and above and below and was gone. I’d passed all the way through it!

  I was almost scared to let go of the bucket and step out on the Eye Level for fear the invisible walk was not only invisible but also not there!

  Somehow I hauled myself up to the sorting psycher while the beam calculators sized me up and then, when the flasher had blinked “Dr. Flerry” as its decision for me, I managed to sink down on the sofa which whisked me into his office.

  The nurse smiled pleasantly and said, “Nervous disability is quite easy to correct and Dr. Flerry is expert. Please be calm.”

  “I haven’t got any nervous disability,” I said. “I came up here to get tested for some glasses.”

  She looked at one of those confounded charts that the sorting psycher forwards ahead of the patient, and when I saw her finger come down to “Stubborn” I knew she’d nod. She did. A thoroughly unmanageable young woman.

  “You haven’t been brought to an eye doctor,” she said. “Dr. Flerry treats nervous disability only, as you must know.”

  “I came for an eye test,” I said, “and I’m going to get an eye test. I don’t give a flimdoodle what that blathery card says; it’s eyes. Do you think a machine knows more about me than I do?”

  “Sometimes a machine does. Now please don’t get upset.”

  “I’m not upset. I guess I know when I need glasses and when I don’t need glasses. And if I want to be tested for glasses, I pretty well gues
s I’ll be tested for glasses!”

  “You,” she said, “are obviously a stubborn sort of fellow.”

  “I guess,” I said, “that I am the most stubborn fellow in this city if not in this whole country.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she said.

  Well, I don’t know why, but I felt a little better after that. And shortly, Dr. Flerry buzzered me into his inner office. He was one of these disgusting young fellows who think they know so much about the human body that they themselves can’t be human.

  “Now be calm,” he said, “and tell me just what the trouble is.” He seemed to be in a sort of ecstatic state and he didn’t seem to take me seriously enough.

  “I won’t be calm,” I said, “and I don’t have to tell you what the trouble is. You’ve got a psycher chart there that will tell you all about me even down to my last wart.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you do have a wart. I shall have Dr. Dremster remove it before you go.”

  “You won’t touch any wart of mine,” I said. “I came in here to get a pair of glasses, and by the Eternal, I’ll get them if I have to sit here all night.”

  I guess I had him there, for he sat and stared at me for some little time before he replied.

  Finally he said, “Now just what is making you nervous?”

  “I am not nervous!” I shouted. “I want glasses!”

  “Ah,” he said. And then he sat back and pushed his head against a pad so the mechanical chair arm would put a lighted cigarette in his mouth. “My dear fellow, tell me just why you need a pair of glasses.”

  “Because I need them, that’s why!”

  “Reading glasses?”

  “Reading glasses!” I said. “I never read any of the bilge the papers are ordered to publish.”

  “Then you watch the televisor quite a bit?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one of those things on for a million dollars. What do you ever hear but advertising and smoky bands, and what do you see but girls with legs? Bah!” I guess I was telling him now.