Astounding Stories #161

In "The Menace of the Invisible Planet!", Captain Greer’s true allegiance is exposed as he serves as a scout for an alien race preparing to invade Earth. With the Fly and Fly Girl standing as the only remaining threats, the invaders remain baffled by the source of the heroes’ extraordinary abilities.

When Professor Drexel builds a towering robotic insect named Insecto to be Fly Girl’s new partner, the high-tech helper seems like the perfect solution—until the patrol takes a sudden, dangerous turn. With no warning, Insecto turns on Fly Girl, leaving her to wonder if the machine was ever truly under control.

In "The Second Mrs. Manion!", Lady Cynthia Conway wakes from a coma convinced she’s been married to Bill Manion in Kansas—though she’s never met him in England. When Bill arrives to bring her home, he insists she’s been with him for five years, leaving Cynthia to wonder: which version of her life is real?

In "This Dark Cave," a man returns to his shelter, shaken by the eerie silence of a town he thought was under siege—only to realize it was never at war, but evacuated for atomic tests. The weight of his fear collides with the unsettling stillness of a world that moved on without him.

In "The Anatomy of a Nightmare!" from Astounding Stories #161, a struggling science fiction writer turns to pills in a desperate bid for inspiration, only to plunge into a dream haunted by red-eyed aliens—only to realize, with a jolt, that the nightmare is just a distorted mirror of his own uninspired reality.