Astounding Stories #71

In "Kick of the Month" Club, Lydia Fellin lures reluctant socialite Ralph Hardy into a high-octane underground circle where each month's challenge pushes the limits of danger and daring. With no rules but risk and a roster of thrill-seekers who live for the edge, Ralph must decide whether to play along—or walk away before the next stunt goes too far.

In "The Jaguar's Sinister Safari," Ralph, secretly the masked vigilante the Jaguar, finds himself torn between his growing romance with Lydia and his mission to dismantle the "Kick Of The Month" Club. As the safari unfolds under the African sun, old rivalries stir and the line between hero and heart begins to blur.

In "Facing the Future," Arthur Mellon’s experiment with a new cigarette filter leads to a dizzying chain of events that blurs the line between prediction and coincidence. After smoking his latest prototype, he reads a newspaper predicting an assassination and a sudden surge in an oil company’s stock—only to find the paper missing the next day, and yet the events unfold exactly as foreseen. With nothing but a hunch and his savings, Arthur bets on the oil company and walks away with a fortune, leaving him to wonder just how much of the future he’s truly glimpsed.

Orville Kern’s leap to a distant world begins with a signal from a mysterious girl on a space-screen—Astra—whose beauty and voice pull him across the stars. But when he arrives, the reality of her world and her true self unfold in ways he never imagined.