The Snowbank Orbit

By Fritz Leiber

“Rig ship for the snowbank orbit! Snowbank orbit with stinger! Mr. Grunfeld, raise the fleet.” Aft, Croker muttered, “Rig our shrouds, don’t he mean? Rig shrouds and firecrackers mounted on Fourth of July rockets.” Ness said, “Cheer up. Even the longest

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781682995891

Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was the highly acclaimed author of numerous science fiction stories and novels, many of which were made into films. He is best known as creator of the classic Lankhmar fantasy series. Leiber has won many awards, including the coveted Hugo and Nebula, and was honored as a lifetime Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Book preview

The Snowbank Orbit

by Fritz Leiber

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2015 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition July 2015

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 13: 978-1-68299-589-1

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

The Snowbank Orbit

by Fritz Leiber

Chapter I

The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her footstool. Dear blowzy old bitch-planet, swollen and pale and cold, mad with your Shakespearean moons, white-mottled as death from Venerean Plague, spinning on your side like a poisoned pregnant cockroach, rolling around the sun like a fat drunken floozie with green hair rolling on the black floor of an infinite barroom, what a sweet last view of the Solar System you are for a clean-cut young spaceman.

Grunfeld chopped off that train of thought short. He was young and the First Interstellar War had snatched him up and now it was going to pitch him and twenty other Joes out of the System on a fast curve breaking around Uranus—and so what! He shivered to get a little heat and then applied himself to the occulted star he was tracking through Prospero’s bridge telescope. The star was a twentieth planetary diameter into Uranus, the crosslines showed—a glint almost lost in pale green. That meant