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C.O.D. Mars / Alien Sea (Ace Double, H-40)
COD Mars / Alien Sea - Ace Double, H-40 Author:E. C. Tubb, John Rackham C.O.D. Mars: — Three explorers returned to Earth after nine long years en route to Proxima Centauri and back. You would have supposed that they would have been greeted as the heroes of the century, feted, honored, rewarded. But Earth was rewarding the trio in a strange and terrible manner?with permanent exile in orbit, never to touch any planet's... more » surface again.
If Earth wanted that crew isolated so badly, it ought to be worth a lot for someone to learn the reason, because the powers that ruled the world were not talking.
The Scorfu?the Martian equivalent of a Mafia?had the idea that the three exiles might prove win?ning pieces in their endless competition with Earth. And therefore the somewhat unscrupulous but ab?solutely fearless operative, Slade, could be persuaded that the three from Centauri might mean a million for him?Cash on Delivery, Mars.
Dennis Dillard was a sensor, a dramatape recorder:
Am I a crusader, a death-or-glory hero? The answer is no! I was in this mess on Hydro up to my eyebrows?and who got me in? Dr. Stanley and your Philosophy Corps. And who got me out? Me. And I'm staying out! I've been clobbered by cold-blooded aliens who saw me as edible protein. I've spent hours underwater and I can't even swim. And that's enough. You want to go ahead and save Earth, you do it.
What's Earth got, anyway? Population, pollution and psychosis?let the Venusians and the Roggans fight for it, and destroy it and themselves?just leave me out!
And then Dillard's spaceship took off without him, turning the political issue into a life or death situa?tion?his life....« less