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    Lorelei of the Red Mist
    Lorelei of the Red Mist
    Lorelei of the Red Mist
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Lorelei of the Red Mist

    By Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury

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    About this ebook

    Hugh Starke had died, he was absolutely certain of that. He had not survived when his spaceship crashed as he desperately tried to escape the authorities after pulling off the greatest lone-wolf heist in history. And then he awakened in a new body to find himself a powerful, rich man on a world of bizarre loveliness. He was pleased by his good luck . . . until he discovered that his new body was hated by everyone on this strange and lovely planet, and that his soul was owned by Rann, devil-goddess of Falga, who was using him for her own gain. A grand adventure from the golden age of pulps by two masters of the genre.

    Leigh Brackett was the undisputed Queen of Space Opera and the first woman to be nominated for the coveted Hugo Award. She wrote short stories, novels, and scripts for Hollywood. She wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back shortly before her death in 1978.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJan 18, 2021
    ISBN9781515449836
    Lorelei of the Red Mist

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      Book preview

      Lorelei of the Red Mist - Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury

      Lorelei of the Red Mist

      by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury

      ©2020 Positronic Publishing

      Lorelei of the Red Mist is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

      Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4981-2

      Trade Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4982-9

      E-book ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4983-6

      Lorelei of the Red Mist

      He died—and then awakened in a new body. He found himself on a world of bizarre loveliness, a powerful, rich man. He took pleasure in his turn of good luck ... until he discovered that his new body was hated by all on this strange planet, that his soul was owned by Rann, devil-goddess of Falga, who was using him for her own gain.

      The Company dicks were good. They were plenty good. Hugh Starke began to think maybe this time he wasn’t going to get away with it.

      His small stringy body hunched over the control bank, nursing the last ounce of power out of the Kallman. The hot night sky of Venus fled past the ports in tattered veils of indigo. Starke wasn’t sure where he was any more. Venus was a frontier planet, and still mostly a big X, except to the Venusians—who weren’t sending out any maps. He did know that he was getting dangerously close to the Mountains of White Cloud. The backbone of the planet, towering far into the stratosphere, magnetic trap, with God knew what beyond. Maybe even God wasn’t sure.

      But it looked like over the mountains or out. Death under the guns of the Terro-Venus Mines, Incorporated, Special Police, or back to the Luna cell blocks for life as an habitual felon.

      Starke decided he would go over.

      Whatever happened, he’d pulled off the biggest lone-wolf caper in history. The T-V Mines payroll ship, for close to a million credits. He cuddled the metal strongbox between his feet and grinned. It would be a long time before anybody equaled that.

      His mass indicators began to jitter. Vaguely, a dim purple shadow in the sky ahead, the Mountains of White Cloud stood like a wall against him. Starke checked the positions of the pursuing ships. There was no way through them. He said flatly, All right, damn you, and sent the Kallman angling up into the thick blue sky.

      He had no very clear memories after that. Crazy magnetic vagaries, always a hazard on Venus, made his instruments useless. He flew by the seat of his pants and he got over, and the T-V men didn’t. He was free, with a million credits in his kick.

      Far below in the virgin darkness he saw a sullen crimson smear on the night, as though someone had rubbed it with a bloody thumb. The Kallman dipped toward it. The control bank flickered with blue flame, the jet timers blew, and then there was just the screaming of air against the falling hull.

      Hugh Starke sat still and waited....

      He knew, before he opened his eyes, that he was dying. He didn’t feel any pain, he didn’t feel anything, but he knew just the same. Part of him was cut loose. He was still there, but not attached any more.

      He raised his eyelids. There was a ceiling. It was a long way off. It was black stone veined with smoky reds and ambers. He had never seen it before.

      His head was tilted toward the right. He let his gaze move down that way. There were dim tapestries, more of the black stone, and three tall archways giving onto a balcony. Beyond the balcony was a sky veiled and clouded with red mist. Under the mist, spreading away from a murky line of cliffs, was an ocean. It wasn’t water and it didn’t have any waves on it, but there was nothing else to call it. It burned, deep down inside itself, breathing up the red fog. Little angry bursts of flame coiled up under the flat surface, sending circles of sparks flaring out like ripples from a dropped stone.

      He closed his eyes and frowned and moved his head restively. There was the texture of fur against his skin. Through the cracks of his eyelids he saw that he lay on a high bed piled with silks and soft tanned pelts. His body was covered. He was rather glad he couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter because he wouldn’t be using it any more anyway, and it hadn’t been such a hell of a body to begin with. But he was used to it, and he didn’t want to see it now, the way he knew it would have to look.

      He looked along over the foot of the bed, and he saw the woman.

      She sat watching him from a massive carved chair softened with a single huge white pelt like a drift of snow. She smiled, and let him look. A pulse began to beat under his jaw, very feebly.

      She was tall and sleek and insolently curved. She wore a sort of tabard of pale grey spider-silk, held to her body by a jeweled girdle, but it was just a nice piece of ornamentation. Her face was narrow, finely cut, secret, faintly amused. Her lips, her eyes, and her flowing silken hair were all the same pale cool shade of aquamarine.

      Her skin was white, with no hint of rose. Her shoulders, her forearms, the long flat curve of her thighs, the pale-green tips of her breasts, were dusted with tiny particles that glistened like powdered diamond. She sparkled softly like a fairy thing against the snowy fur, a creature of foam and moonlight and clear shallow water. Her eyes never left his, and they were not human, but he knew that they would have done things to him if he had had any feeling below the neck.

      *

      He started to speak. He had no strength to move his tongue. The woman leaned forward, and as though her movement were a signal four men rose from the tapestried shadows by the wall. They were like her. Their eyes were pale and strange like hers.

      She said, in liquid High Venusian, "You’re dying, in this body. But you will not die. You will sleep now, and wake in a strange body, in a strange place. Don’t be afraid. My

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