Forever We Die!

By Stephen Marlowe

Rhodes faced the agonies of alien torture because he knew the secret which held an entire world in bondage. It was a secret proclaiming—forever we die!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Mar 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781479479887

Stephen Marlowe

Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955). Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008. 

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Table of Contents

FOREVER WE DIE!

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

FOREVER WE DIE!

STEPHEN MARLOWE

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Imagination, August 1956.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Stephen Marlowe was the pseudonym of Milton Lesser (1928-2008), an American author of science fiction, mystery novels, and fictional autobiographies of historical figures such as Goya, Christopher Columbus, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edgar Allan Poe. He legally changed his name to Marlowe when his detective series featuring Chester Drum—created in 1955 with The Second Longest Night and concluding in 1968 with Drumbeat Marianne—became his most successful endeavor. As the New York Times wrote in his obituary, Chester drum was known familiarly as Chet...a tough unmarried ex-cop who kept a bottle in his office and a .357 Magnum at his side. Based in Washington, he took on cases involving international intrigue that in nearly two dozen novels took him to exotic locales around the globe. Marlowe also wrote as Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, C.H. Thames, Jason Ridgway, Stephen Wilder, and Ellery Queen.

He attended the College of William & Mary, earning his degree in philosophy, marrying Leigh Lang soon after graduating. He was drafted into the United States Army and served during the Korean War. He and his wife divorced during 1962. With his second wife, Ann, he lived in Williamsburg, Virginia until his death in 2008 from myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone-marrow disorder.

He was awarded the French Prix Gutenberg du Livre during 1988 for The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus, and during 1997 he was awarded a Life Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. He also served on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America.

As Milton Lesser, he was a popular and prolific contributor to science fiction pulp magazines. Tyrants of Time, with its sensational title promising time travel and adventure, visits some of the greatest villains of history, including Adolph Hitler—surely much on the minds of writers of the era, since the Hitler and the Nazis had only been defeated nine years before.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

CHAPTER ONE

The guard spat in Phil Rhodes’ food bowl, closed the grate, and trudged away down the stone-walled corridor.

Darkness returned to the narrow, coffin-shaped cell. Rhodes reached for the bowl of gruel. It was tepid, not hot. The cell was very cold. In the square of light admitted briefly when the grate had been opened, Rhodes had seen the big, unkempt guard’s breath, a puff of smoke on the cold air. He had also seen the guard hack spittle into the bowl of gruel.

It was no whim on the guard’s part. Rhodes grinned wryly, and realized he was doing so, and encouraged his facial muscles in the act. Nothing around here was a whim. Absolutely nothing. It was all part of a plan, and the purpose of the plan was to break Rhodes.

Given: one Earthman.

Problem: to degrade him by subtle psychological torture.

Purpose: a big, fat question mark which, by itself, was almost enough to drive Rhodes crazy.

He ate the gruel. He held his breath and got it down somehow, got it down because he had to.

It had been some time since the last question period, and Rhodes expected to be summoned momentarily. Why me? he thought for the hundredth time. That was part of it, too. Why Rhodes? He was only a student at the Earth University at Deneb III, here on Kedak now—that was Deneb IV—to do field work in extra-terrestrial anthropology. And the Kedaki had come for him one night, how long ago? Rhodes had no idea how long it was, and that was part of the plan too. His sleep was irregular, usually disturbed by one or another of the guards as part of the overall pattern of psychological torture.

Rhodes began to shiver. It was growing suddenly cold. Naturally, that was no accident. The cell was very small and so shaped that Rhodes could neither recline fully nor stand up without jack-knifing his spine. Obviously, he couldn’t engage in much physical activity to keep warm. The Kedaki knew this: it was part of the maddening plan.

Rhodes shook with cold, felt the skin of his face going numb, heard his teeth chattering. The abrupt cold now was his entire universe. He made an effort of will—you’re warm, he told himself, you’re warm. His lips took on that peculiar numb puckering sensation which meant, he knew, that they were blue with cold. He felt a welcome lethargy, then, as if the terrible cold were a bed of repose, the most comfortable, most wonderful bed he’d ever had. He wanted to sink back in it, surrender to it.

If he did, if he surrendered to the blood-freezing cold, he would die.

No, he told himself. That was wrong. They wanted him to think he would die. But it was out of the question. If they’d wanted to kill him, there were easier ways. What they wanted was a state of mind. They wanted terror, a simple animal fear of death.

You’re not going to die, Rhodes told himself. They need you—for something. They’re very good at making you think so, but you’re not going to die.

A sudden blast of hot air belched into the freezing cell.

It was Turkish-bath hot, and it dissipated the cold at once. It was stifling. Rhodes, who was sitting awkwardly because the cell was constructed for minimum comfort, opened his mouth and gulped in the hot, wet air. His lungs needed more oxygen; his head was giddy with the need; his pulses throbbed.

He sank into a troubled sleep, shoulders propped against rough stone. He slept for half an hour while the unseen vents in the cell poured heat on him.

There was a grating sound, and footsteps. Something hard prodded Rhodes’ back. He opened his eyes. The heavy boot struck again, thudding against his kidney. He rolled away from it.

Crawl out of there, the guard said in Kedaki.

Rhodes, who was a student of the Kedaki civilization, understood the language perfectly. But even if he had not, the tone of voice was unmistakable. Rhodes