Once a Greech

By Evelyn E. Smith

Discovering intelligent life was the last thing Fleet Captain Iversen wanted to happen to his watch. Especially when the ship in question was commanded by his absolute worst officer. And yet, here he was. Evelyn E. Smith is best known as the author of the Miss Melville mysteries. From 1952 to 1969 she wrote dozens of science fiction and fantasy short stories that appeared in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy, Super Science Fiction, and Fantastic Universe. Her stories were witty, well written, often humorous, and always unforgettable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649741608

Evelyn E. Smith

Evelyn E. Smith (25 July 1922 – 4 July 2000) was an American writer of science fiction and mysteries, as well as a compiler of crossword puzzles.

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Once a Greech

by Evelyn E. Smith

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2021 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.

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ISBN 978-1-64974-160-8

The mildest of men, Iversen was capable of murder...to disprove Harkaway’s hypothesis that in the midst of life, we are in life!

Just two weeks before the S. S. Herringbone of the Interstellar Exploration, Examination (and Exploitation) Service was due to start her return journey to Earth, one of her scouts disconcertingly reported the discovery of intelligent life in the Virago System.

Thirteen planets, Captain Iversen snarled, wishing there were someone on whom he could place the blame for this mischance, and we spend a full year here exploring each one of them with all the resources of Terrestrial science and technology, and what happens? On the nineteenth moon of the eleventh planet, intelligent life is discovered. And who has to discover it? Harkaway, of all people. I thought for sure all the moons were cinders or I would never have sent him out to them just to keep him from getting in my hair.

The boy’s not a bad boy, sir, the first officer said. Just a thought incompetent, that’s all—which is to be expected if the Service will choose its officers on the basis of written examinations. I’m glad to see him make good.

Iversen would have been glad to see Harkaway make good, too, only such a concept seemed utterly beyond the bounds of possibility. From the moment the young man had first set foot on the S. S. Herringbone, he had seemed unable to make anything but bad. Even in such a conglomeration of fools under Captain Iverson, his idiocy was of outstanding quality.

The captain, however, had not been wholly beyond reproach in this instance, as he himself knew. Pity he had made such an error about the eleventh planet’s moons. It was really such a small mistake. Moons one to eighteen and twenty to forty-six still appeared to be cinders. It was all too easy for the spectroscope to overlook Flimbot, the nineteenth.

But it would be Flimbot which had turned out to be a green and pleasant planet, very similar to Earth. Or so Harkaway reported on the intercom.

And the other forty-five aren’t really moons at all, he began. They’re—

You can tell me all that when we reach Flimbot, Iversen interrupted, which should be in about six hours. Remember, that intercom uses a lot of power and we’re tight on fuel.