Gateway Essentials
3 total works
Nine brilliant stories of infinite space and alien consciousness, suffused with a sense of wonder . . .
The Exploration of Space
The Bees of Knowledge
Exit from City
Me and my Antronoscope
All the King's Men
An Overload
Mutation Planet
The Problem of Morley's Emission
The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor
The mighty ships of the Third Time Fleet relentlessly patrolled the Chronotic Empire's thousand-year frontier, blotting out an error of history here or there before swooping back to challenge other time-travelling civilisations far into the future.
Captain Mond Aton had been proud to serve in such a fleet. But now, falsely convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, he had been given the cruellest of sentences: to be sent unprotected into time as a lone messenger between the cruising timeships. After such an inconceivable experience in the endless voids there was only one option left to him.
To be allowed to die.
He was unique. Alone in a world that did not understand him, he tested the super powers of his mind and body. More than a machine, but less than a man, he searched restlessly for the truth. Before his quest was done, he had died and been reborn, had fought his way from a grim dungeon to a royal throne.
Jasperodus, the only super-robot to have been granted consciousness, must decide whether to share his soul-possessing secrets with the other robots or to betray them to save mankind.