The Spiraling Worm

UNCOLLECTED TALES

001./ Reversed Terror 
David Conyers

Without warning or announcement, she stumbled into one of the larger hexagonal rooms, its ceiling vanishing into darkness, its edges a blackness around basalt rock as old as the earth. The centerpiece was a control board with numerous black dials and organic knobs like toadstools, but no displays. It was high, several meters above the stone floor so well beyond her reach. She guessed those dials and knobs were never designed to favor a human’s touch.

Major Harrison Peel returns, to ask a researcher to undertake a dangerous investigation for him translating a stone written in an alien language. When the researcher falls into a coma, Peel finds that it is impossible to remove the stone from the clutches of her hand, not unless he wants to cause her another heart attack.  

002./ Stomach Acid 

David Conyers & Brian M Sammons

As if a cold bucket of water had been thrown over him waking him from a nightmare, Jordan recalled again his experiences in the stifling complex. The claustrophobia, the spores, the gunfire that killed more of their own than the ESBs they were trying to capture. For a long time there he thought he was never going to get out... Still, they did come home with their prize. They had captured one of the bastards... well, half of one at least. Hell, not even half of one but at least they were alive.  

In the heart of the Amazonian rainforests, Major Peel is blackmailed, when a human agent of an alien species compromises his life expectancy. The only way that Peel can live beyond a single day, is to turn against the American agent, code-named Joshua, who hired him to act again the very menace that now controls Peel.

003./ Not What One Does

C.J. Henderson & John Sunseri

The pair were on the lower East side of Manhattan--essentially her turf. The bar was poorly-lit, claustrophobic, and Dixon was the only white person within its walls. She had chosen the venue to see how the mysterious NSA agent would react to being conspicuous. The experiment ended with her mildly surprised at the man’s equanimity--upon entering he had smiled as he made his way through the clustered knots of cigarette and cigar-smoking Chinese and black men, apologizing and looking directly into their eyes.

Jack Dixon consults the services of New York psychic Lai Wan, but his intentions are perhaps not as honourable as they might first appear, and the conspiracy he vowes to fight might stretch deeper than either one of them can imagine.