Weird Fantasy #9

Jean Belmont’s dream of becoming the first woman on Mars takes a chilling turn when the expedition’s landing is followed by eerie whispers and unseen eyes. As the crew explores the red planet, one of the scientists vanishes—only to return moments before takeoff, changed in ways no one can explain. With secrets unfolding between Jean and her husband Ken, and the line between ally and alien blurring, the journey to Mars becomes a test of trust, identity, and survival.

In "The Duplicates," two scientists, each smitten with the same woman, Dora, turn to a duplicating machine to solve their romantic dilemma—only to find their solution spirals into something far more complicated. When the copies begin aging rapidly, the men are left with a surprising and unsettling consequence of their scientific experiment.

In "The Connection," a middle-aged scientist rents a basement from a young woman, drawn to her not just by the space but by the quiet mystery of her past—she once found an old man hiding in the same cellar decades before. As their bond deepens, their love grows, but his fear of age and time pushes him to tamper with the very fabric of the past, hoping to rewrite his own story. When the experiment goes awry, he finds himself not in a different time, but in the moment that began it all—seen through the eyes of a little girl who’s just discovered him.

In "A Mistake In Multiplication," spacemen stumble upon a derelict vessel holding alien creatures in suspended animation, unaware of the chaos their return to Earth will unleash. Once awakened, the creatures—revealed to reproduce asexually—multiply with terrifying speed, splitting into male and female forms before escaping into the wild. The story builds on a single, chilling premise: what happens when a scientific oversight becomes a global threat?