Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Stutterer
    The Stutterer
    The Stutterer
    Ebook63 pages47 minutes

    The Stutterer

    By R.R. Merliss

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Stutterer

    Related to The Stutterer

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Smrtss

      Apr 10, 2024

      In the dim, wet oven of the Huey’s troop compartment, the corporal sat on a flak jacket behind the sweat-stained backs of First Squad. Simms, the big machine gunner for Fire Team 2, leaned back against him, jamming the corporal’s knees right up to hi

      13 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 2, 2019

      Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulf-stream of winter, nearer the shores of spring. —Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1854 [T]he pure luxury of a cloudless sky designed not to

      4 min read

    • Article

      Moscow

      Feb 21, 2018

      Moscow
      9 min read

    • Article

      Top Ten Sea Books

      Jun 5, 2020

      SJ AND SMH In the October of 1991, a storm of rare wickedness hit the North Atlantic. Caught up in it was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail, which went down with the loss of all hands. At that time, the author was working as a tree surgeon in the bo

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: July 2019

      Jul 3, 2019

      “I was born—don’t know the hour— / Slapped on the ass / And handed over crying / To someone many years dead / In a country no longer on a map.” The post Must-Read Poetry: July 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      More Things In Heaven

      Dec 10, 2021

      It’s the deep mid-winter, when sailors check their warps, settle down in lamp-lit saloons, top up their bogey stoves and pour themselves a dram. If they’re in tune with the outside world, they’ll also shut off the flickering screens, kill the music m

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ulysses: Good or Bad?

      Feb 2, 2018

      Ulysses: Good or Bad?
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Time Machine

      Aug 4, 2021

      There’s a pattern built into this story – can you work it out from the numbers in bold at the start of each section? I’m sitting on the beach by Rhodes port, watching sailors load our luggage onto a ship bound for Rome. I don’t want to go, but my f

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Arif Anwar

      Dec 9, 2021

      I’m on track to have finished a book a week in 2021, which I’m happy with given that so much of my time is spoken for by family, work, and writing. I don’t like stuffing 100-plus books into a year like passengers in a rush hour subway car, leaving me

      13 min read

    • Article

      Off The Scale

      Apr 29, 2022

      Off The Scale
      7 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Power And The Passion

      Sep 19, 2021

      The Power And The Passion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Voyages Of A Simple Sailor Are Over

      Feb 27, 2020

      Suddenly the sea seems a bigger place. That’s because the greatest exponent of shrink-wrapping it for the rest of us, between the covers of his books, has retired from the ocean. Well, almost. ‘I’d never say never, but firstly I feel too much of an a

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Allure of Messy Reddit Stories

      Mar 19, 2023

      Jerusalem Demsas’s culture and entertainment picks include Children of Time, Vampire Weekend, and chasing down stories people tell—or make up—on Reddit.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    • Article

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men

      Sep 10, 2020

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men
      8 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      THE FIRST FIVE PAGES: KJ Maitland

      Apr 1, 2021

      Writing historical crime thrillers often feels like one of those crazy circus acts where you have to stand on the backs of two galloping horses, with one foot on each, trying to keep your balance. One of the horses is the historical facts, the other

      6 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 1, 2021

      If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. —Rudyard Kipling, “Epitaphs of the War,” The Years Between, 1919 She consulted me, a glance, and said: “I think not anything off the wagon. It arrives too quickly. Let’s have somethi

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mercy Mission

      Apr 23, 2020

      Paul Gallico 1st published 1941 (illustrated by Peter Scott 1946) Frith, a shy village girl, has brought an injured goose to the deformed and solitary Philip Rhayader who lives alone in a lighthouse on the Essex marshes. A cautious friendship has beg

      3 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Nov 2, 2023

      I’m not sure if I can truly pinpoint the moment my new novel Once A Monster was born – but I can trace the history of some of its most important ingredients. As a boy, looking through an old illustrated book of Greek myths, and being at once captiva

      5 min read

    Reviews for The Stutterer

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Stutterer - R.R. Merliss

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stutterer, by R.R. Merliss

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Stutterer

      Author: R.R. Merliss

      Illustrator: Riley

      Release Date: September 5, 2007 [EBook #22512]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STUTTERER ***

      Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

      THE STUTTERER

      BY R. R. MERLISS

      A man can be killed by a toy gun—he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete—a thing or an idea?

      Illustrated by Riley

      Out of the twenty only one managed to escape the planet. And he did it very simply, merely by walking up to the crowded ticket window at one of the rocket ports and buying passage to Earth. His Army identification papers passed the harassed inspection of the agent, and he gratefully and silently pocketed the small plastic stub that was handed him in exchange for his money.

      He picked his way with infinite care through the hordes of ex-soldiers clamoring for passage back to the multitudinous planets from which they had come. Then he slowly climbed the heavy ramp into the waiting rocket.

      He saw with relief that the seats were strongly constructed, built to survive the pressure of many gravities and he chose one as far removed as possible from the other passengers.

      He was still very apprehensive, and, as he waited for the rocket to take off, he tried hard to remember the principles of the pulse drive that powered the ship, and whether his additional weight would upset its efficiency enough to awaken suspicion.

      The seats filled quickly with excited hurrying passengers. Soon he heard the great door clang shut, and saw the red light flicker on, warning of the take-off. He felt a slow surge of pressure as the ship arose from the ground, and his chair creaked ominously with the extra weight. He became fearful that it might collapse, and he strained forward trying to shift some of the pressure through his feet to the floor. He sat that way, tense and immobile, for what seemed a long time until abruptly the strain was relieved and he heard the rising and falling whine of the rockets that told him the ship was in pulse drive, flickering back and forth across the speed of light.

      He realized that the pilots had not discovered his extra weight, and that the initial hazards were over. The important thing was to look like a passenger, a returning soldier like the others, so that no one would notice him and remember his presence.

      His fellow travelers were by this time chatting with one another, some playing cards, and others watching the teledepth screens. These were the adventurers who had flocked from all corners of the galaxy to fight in the first national war in centuries. They were the uncivilized few who had read about battle and armed struggle in their history books and found the old stories exciting.

      They paid no attention to their silent companion who sat quietly looking through the quartz windows at the diamond-bright stars, tacked against the blackness of infinity.

      The fugitive scarcely moved the entire time of the passage. Finally when Earth hung out in the sky like a blue balloon, the ship cut its pulsations and swung around for a tail landing.

      The atmosphere screamed through the fins of the rocket, and the continents and the countries, and then the rivers and the mountains took shape. The big ship settled down as gently as

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1