Spellbound #55

In "The Strange Prison!", a man awakens in an underwater realm where he’s been transformed to survive beneath the waves. When the king’s daughter takes a sudden interest in him, he’s tempted not by her affection but by her dowry—a chest of seashells that serve as currency under the sea. After stealing it, he collapses on the surface, unable to breathe, and is imprisoned. The king sentences him to two years in confinement, promising that the doctors will reverse the transformation and return him to land—though the seashells he stole will be useless in the world above.

In "Marbles," the crew of the X-17 rockets toward Mars, their excitement building as the distant planets shimmer like marbles in the black sky. But when astronaut McGraw reports that Mars has shrunk to the size of a rubber ball—and Enkers confirms it by venturing outside—the mission takes a strange turn. As the crew describes the other planets behaving the same way, Earth’s command center reels, convinced the men have lost their minds.

In "Conditioned Reflex," an alien envoy from a methane-rich world is sent to Earth to study humanity's strengths and weaknesses in preparation for conquest. After being altered to resemble a human and trained to mimic their behaviors, he develops a habit of smoking cigarettes—just like the humans he's observing. When he returns home and lights one out of instinct, the act triggers a catastrophic chain reaction in his planet's atmosphere.