Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 266: what you’re looking at

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

LORD OF A THOUSAND SUNS Poul Anderson “YES, YOU’LL FIND almost anything man has ever imagined, somewhere out in the Galaxy,” | said. “There are SO damned many millions of planets, and such a fantastic variety of surface conditions and of life evolving to meet them, and of intelligence and civilization appearing in that life. Why, I’ve been on worlds with fire-breathing dragons, and on worlds where dwarfs fought things that could pass for the goblins our mothers used to scare us with.” Laird nodded. “Uh-huh,” he answered, in that oddly slow and soft voice of his. “Il once let a genie out of a bottle.” “Eh? What happened?” “It killed me.” | opened my mouth to laugh, and then took a second glance at him and shut it again. He was just too dead-pan serious about it. Not poker-faced, the way a good actor can be when he’s slipping over a tall one—no, there was a sudden misery behind his eyes, and somehow it was mixed with the damnedest cold humor. | didn’t Know Laird very well. Nobody did. He was out most of the time on Galactic Survey, prowling a thousand eldritch planets never meant for human eyes. He came back to the Solar System more rarely and for briefer visits than CORniclooo SS (SO)