A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 108: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

RACKETEERS IN THE SKY 105 Out in the open again, striding along a palm-shaded walk toward the graceful white tower that housed the studios and main transmitter of TAU, Dr. Bull shiv- ered with sudden realization of the vulner- ability of Taurus. The sky was almost black. Beneath it, everything was bright. Fountains glittered with the Sun. Sprays on the lawns made rainbows. Green leaves were luminous. Colored glass made the buildings into monster jewels. But the midnight sky was suddenly dead and oppressive. Dr. Bull had an unpleasant sense of the nearness of the cold forbidding mystery of space. The Valiant was armored against twenty-four-inch shells. But the hospitals and hotels and casinos, the gardens and shops and warehouses, the power and at- mosphere plants, TAU and the labora- tories and the huge mail-order building and Dr. Bull’s several luxurious dwell- ings—these were protected only by a few thousand feet of gasious oxygen and helium. : Resolutely murmuring, “Imagination. Audacity. Victory,” he squared his plump shoulders again, in the natty uniform, and strode briskly into the telecast tower. He paused for a moment to look up at the huge telecast receiver screen at the end of the first floor hall. For he found new courage there. Out of a montage of colliding planets, embattled space-craft, tremendous weird machines, and extra-terrestrial monsters, Dr. Bull’s own face grinned from the screen. The beard was dyed a youthful black, and a space-helmet had replaced the glasses. An ion-gun rose in his heroic hand, flamed straight from the screen. The announcer was saying: “This is TAU, Dr. Bull’s own inde- pendent station, on Taurus, the hub of health. Now we present—through the courtesy of Taurium and Dr. Bull’s radio- genic reactivation treatment—your thrill- ing serial of interstellar adventure—Cap- tain Planeteer. This favorite character, played by Dr. Bull himself, is based on the true facts of his own youthful adven- tures, in the days when he was an inter- planetary exile, hunted from planet to planet by his jealous persecutors, the IMA, the ICC, and the Sun Patrol—” Dr. Bull lifted his white-bearded -chin. Captain Planeteer, in the serial, never ad- mitted defeat. That was the spirit. Imagi- nation, Audacity, Victory. He hurried into the private automatic elevator that whipped him up to his luxurious pen- house on top of the telecast tower. CHAPTER 2 Betrayed! LATINUM and enamel shimmered P richly. The terrace garden was bright and fragrant with blooms from several planets. Looking up at the black hostile sky, Dr. Bull shivered again. Here on Taurus he had made the dream of this life come true—but one salvo from the Valiant could shatter it like a bubble. The white dome of his observatory gleamed above the garden. Already pant- ing and perspiring, hegstumbled into it, and seated himself at the long thirty-inch refractor. He picked up a telephone, and called General Berg. There was a little delay, and a harried operator told him that a panic among the guests had jammed the system. At last Berg’s voice, sounding breathless and worried, gave the Valiant’s position. He found it. A sleek black shadow against the silvered black of space, slid- ing down toward Taurus in a menacing spiral. Even at the lowest magnification, it looked huge. The details of the turrets, with jutting rifles and rocket-torpedo tubes, were alarmingly visible. His knees were wobbling, as he hurried down to the tight-beam communicator in ECOMICLOC|S (C(O)