1
Solar Stiff, by Chas. A. Stopher
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solar Stiff, by Chas. A. Stopher This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Solar Stiff
Author: Chas. A. Stopher
Release Date: April 30, 2009 [EBook #28646]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLAR STIFF ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
SOLAR STIFF
By
CHAS. A. STOPHER
Totem poles are a dime a dozen north of 63° ... but only Ketch, the lying Eskimo, vowed they dropped out of frigid northern skies.
Probos Five gazed at the white expanse ahead, trying to determine where his ship would crash. Something was haywire in the fuel system of his Interstar Runabout. He was losing altitude fast, so fast that all five pairs of his eyes couldn't focus on a place to land.
Five pairs of arms, each pair about three feet apart on the loglike body, pushed buttons and rotated controls frantically, but to no avail. In a few short minutes it would all be over for Probos Five. Even if by some miracle he remained unhurt after crashing, he would die shortly thereafter. The frigid climatic conditions of the third planet were deadly to a Mercurian. He thought once of donning his space suit but decided against it. That would merely prolong the agony. From Planet Three, when one has a smashed space cruiser, there is