Weird Science #17

In "Plucked!", a young woman finds herself suddenly snatched during a quiet evening, whisked away to an alien world where Earth’s lost souls are gathered for a terrifying banquet. The story unfolds with a quiet dread as the true horror lies not in the abduction, but in the eerie silence left behind—no one remembers she was ever there.

When a Broadway promoter hears rumors of a monstrous creature on a remote island, he assembles an expedition led by Larry and a charter captain, hoping to bring the beast to New York for a sensational show at Madison Square Garden. What begins as a hunt for a fearsome spectacle takes a shocking turn when they realize too late that the island monster—far from a mindless beast—was an alien emissary sent in peace, bearing a message from another world.

In "The Long Years!" from Weird Science #17 (1953), a group of Earthlings land on a desolate, war-ravaged Mars and discover an aging scientist living in isolation with his young family. When the scientist dies suddenly, the visitors uncover a hidden cemetery nearby—where they find the graves of his family, and the chilling truth that the children he raised were not flesh and blood, but androids built to keep him from succumbing to loneliness.