Also included are "A Slave is a Slave," from the April 1962 issue of Analog ("There has always been strong sympathy for the poor," said JWC, "meek, downtrodden slave -- the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced. . . ?"); "Oomphel in the Sky," from Analog, November 1960 ("Since Logic derives from postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates . . . so how can a man fight a native superstition with logic? Or anything else. . . ?"); "Omnilingual" from the February 1957 issue of Astounding, ("To translate writings, you need a key to the code -- and if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years before the first writer of Earth was born . . . how could the Martian be translated. . . ?"); and last though hardly least, "The Keeper," from Venture Science Fiction, July 1957 ("Evil men had stolen his treasure, and Raud set out with his deer rifle and his great dog Brave to catch the thieves before they could reach the Starfolk. That the men had negatron pistols meant little -- Raud was the Keeper. . . .")

Author Biography

Henry Beam Piper (1904 - 1964) was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.