THE HAND OF DR KAIFENG By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-race - that was the ideal of many scientific Utopians. By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-army - that was a dream of many military commanders. By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a horde of obedient but brilliant monsters - that was the scheme of Dr. Kaifeng. For Cap Kennedy, the abduction of a dozen leading geneticists spelled trouble for Earth. For their trails led not to some idealist, or to some would-be Napoleon, but pointed only at the one man in the galaxy who might prove to be more powerful than the legions of Terra themselves.

The things from beyond the Milky Way galaxy found the intelligent races of our universe amusingly slight. To them, possessors of vast cosmic power, the strivings of various humanoids to outdo each other were a source of contemptuous entertainment. They established a contest between the worlds. It would be an Olympiad of the whole galaxy - a Galactiad. Let these puny interstellar intelligences meet each other in contest. Pit one against the other - and let the losers beware! Earth had its team - a mixed group of powerful athletes and genius scientists. Because other worlds did not always believe in the ideal of good sportsmanship, they had to confront the reality. Win at all costs . . . or goodbye to humanity!

THE VAULT IN THE VALLEY On a far semi-desert world, shunned by trade routes, and unattractive to star travellers, there is a barren and isolated valley. Dominating this valley is a great time-eroded Sphinx-like construction - a mass known to the few who have looked upon it as the Skull of Sykoris. Cap Kennedy followed a dangerous trail across many worlds - a trail of murder, duels, and evil - to find that it ended there, before the Skull, confronting a mystery older than all mankind. Beneath that Sphinx lay something desired by Earth's old enemies. Beneath it lay something that lured the criminal minds of many worlds. But what it was none knew - until Cap Kennedy himself released the frightful power of the Eater of Worlds.

From the opening reared a head, wide, flat, huge. Below it stretched a body beautiful with iridescent scales of gold edged with ruby. Nictitating membranes lifted over enormous eyes, deep, limpid pools of ancient wisdom, catching and reflecting the light of the miniature sun, turning the glowing orb into a scatter of stars shimmering in an ebon sea. From open jaws a forked tongue flickered with a soft susurration. Its scent was dry, acrid, tinged with that of living fur on a summer's day. The head rose higher, swaying over the three men on the ledge, the sinuous length of the body almost filling the passage through which it had come. From it radiated an impression of incredible age. "A serpent," whispered Thagamista. "A creature from the beginning of time. Somehow surviving to find this place and feast on those who well here. It was inevitable they should think it a god." THE SLEEPING CITY continues the dynamic saga of the Chronicles of Malkar, E.C. Tubb's newest fantasy hero!

DOORWAY TO UTOPIA "Beyond that curtain of darkness lies paradise." That was the promise of the doorway known as the Gholan Gate, a doorway so ancient that its makers had vanished millions of years before the first Earthly life crawled out of the primeval oceans. It was still functioning in the possession of its discoverers. To go through it was to enter a universe where all your dreams came true - where your every wish was obeyed, every fantasy became reality, where you could play God to your heart's content. But there was a price, for once beyond the Gholan Gate, you would live only in hopes for a second visit, and a third. . . . And to get the right for that return to paradise a man would sell his soul, his people, his world. Cap Kennedy entered THE GHOLAN GATE once . . . and the result became cosmic history.

Scar: a harsh, inhospitable world with a vicious and shifting population of prospectors, drawn from every corner of the galaxy by rumours of a miraculous golden spore. To this violent planet come two more travellers, ready to try their luck among its lethal jungles: the cruel, mocking Lord of Jest - and Dumarest, driven by destiny on his endless search for Lost Earth . . . (First published 1970)

A prolific author of hundreds of stories in the fields of SF, fantasy and westerns, E. C. Tubb, was best-known for his epic 33-volume Dumarest saga, a galaxy-spanning adventure series. Also active for many years in Fandom, he was both a founder member of the British Science Fiction Association and the first editor of its critical journal VECTOR. This omnibus collects two of his out of print classics, THE EXTRA MAN and THE SPACE-BORN, and posthumous novel, FIRES OF SATAN, completed before his death and published now for the first time.

In the course of a continuing quest for his legendary birthplace, Earl Dumarest befriends a young man who says his home world was called Nerth. New Earth, perhaps? Or even the original planet Dumarest seeks? He must find out. And so Dumarest comes to Nerth - to discover that the Cyclan, his prime enemy in the cosmos, is already there . . . together with mysteries and terror that defy the imagination! (First published 1975)