Outer Space #10

Captain Hugo, a war-weary decorated hero of Earth's conflict with the outer galaxies, steals a spacecraft carrying the planet's secret war plans—intending to deliver them to the enemy and force an end to the fighting, no matter the cost. But as he breaks through Earth's defensive perimeter, a familiar figure materializes ahead of him in space, speaking with his own voice and urging him to turn back. Desperate and questioning his own sanity, Hugo must confront what—or who—is blocking his path to the enemy lines.

Ruthless showman Jasper Barlow learns of Professor Paul Perkins' remarkable invention—a device that can transform ordinary mice into giants—and becomes obsessed with using the technology to create a human attraction for his show. When Perkins refuses to sell the machine, Barlow attempts to steal both the device and force the Professor to become his exhibit, but discovers too late that Perkins has a second invention with very different properties. A tale of ambition and comeuppance from the pages of Outer Space.

Space Marshal Hoie and the Earth Galactic Patrol arrive at a crimson world to investigate raids on a neighboring planet, only to discover their silvered ship is blindingly visible to the red-skinned inhabitants whose eyes have evolved over millions of years to see only in that spectrum. When the aliens' initial attack proves ineffectual and they request a truce, Hoie must decide whether to trust their plea for peace or prepare for deception. The marshal's gamble sets off a desperate race against time as the true nature of the red world's inhabitants is revealed.

When the planet Hsin-Chiu faces catastrophic destruction from internal pressures, its astronomer-general Yang refuses to accept his government's indifference and secretly builds a great rocket ship to save his people. As the planet explodes into fragments, Yang and the survivors escape aboard their vessel—shaped like the legendary dragons of their world—seeking a new home among the stars. This tale from ancient Chinese history offers a startling explanation for the origins of a remarkable civilization and its enduring symbols.

A three-year-old boy insists his invisible friend Unkaben has magical powers—making toys come alive and vanishing household salt—while his skeptical father dismisses it all as childhood imagination, but strange events keep challenging that explanation. As Jody's parents grow increasingly unsettled by what they witness, the boy faces pressure to stop believing in his mysterious companion and accept the rational world around him. The question of whether Unkaben is purely imaginary—or something far stranger—lingers even after the toys go silent.

A daydreaming poet so caught up in chasing the perfect rhyme barely notices the strange smiles around him—until a routine traffic stop goes impossibly wrong, and he's forced to confront a truth about parallel worlds and a boss with strict rules about staying hidden. "Off Limits" explores what happens when the line between two realities gets dangerously blurred by simple carelessness.

When the lunar warlord Ongar launches a devastating atomic assault on the peaceful civilization of Atlantis, the philosophers and scientists of Earth's greatest island must race to reverse-engineer captured rocket technology and mount a desperate counterattack. Both worlds collide in a tragic escalation of interplanetary warfare that leaves scars on the moon itself—and dooms the very civilization it was meant to save. A haunting tale of how the search for living space becomes a mutual descent into destruction.

Newly married Hollywood actress Wanda Westlake and her director husband Carlton Dawes arrive at a remote castle in the Balkans, leased from the mysterious Count Rudolfo for their next film—but the charming host harbors a sinister fixation on the glamorous actress, and the castle itself seems to possess a malevolent will of its own. As Wanda explores the ancient corridors, she discovers unsettling secrets about her host's past and finds herself increasingly trapped by forces both supernatural and all too human.

Jed Stone, a perpetually unlucky young man known as "Eight-Ball," finally prepares for his big break—the moment he's convinced will turn his fortune around. But unbeknownst to him, his actions set off a cataclysmic chain of events across an impossibly small world that exists right before his eyes. A darkly clever tale about perspective, scale, and the cruel irony of what counts as success.

Heywood Rogers-Noord, a skeptical English debunker of folklore, travels to Ireland determined to photograph leprechauns and expose the myth once and for all—only to discover that some things resist being proven, no matter how hard you chase them. Armed with his camera and unwavering certainty, he pursues the wee people through the glens, convinced that scientific evidence will settle the matter. But when the truth develops, it may challenge everything he thought he knew about belief and reality.

When rebel Venusians Rylyn and Tyky seize a hidden heat-ray weapon, they take Captain Henry Derwin and his officer Lt. Anne Healy hostage aboard their spaceship, vowing to destroy Earth itself as revenge for their planet's subjugation. With the galaxy's defense grid mobilizing and Derwin held captive, a desperate gambit unfolds to stop the mad scheme before the weapon fires. This seven-page tale captures the classic space-opera tension of interplanetary conflict, where one soldier's quick thinking may be all that stands between Earth and obliteration.