KGLQA-dataset
Collection
contain QuALITY,RACE,NCR,CCLUE-MRC datasets
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13 items
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STALEMATE IN SPACE ***
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Stalemate In Space
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By CHARLES L. HARNESS
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Two mighty metal globes clung in a murderous
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death-struggle, lashing out with flames of poison.
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Yet deep in their twisted, radioactive wreckage
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the main battle raged—where a girl swayed
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sensuously before her conqueror's mocking eyes.
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[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
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Planet Stories Summer 1949.
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Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
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the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
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At first there was only the voice, a monotonous murmur in her ears.
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"
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Die now—die now—die now
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—"
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Evelyn Kane awoke, breathing slowly and painfully. The top of the
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cubicle was bulging inward on her chest, and it seemed likely that a
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rib or two was broken. How long ago? Years? Minutes? She had no way of
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knowing. Her slender right hand found the oxygen valve and turned it.
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For a long while she lay, hurting and breathing helplessly.
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"
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Die now—die now—die now
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—"
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The votron had awakened her with its heart-breaking code message, and
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it was her duty to carry out its command. Nine years after the great
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battle globes had crunched together the mentors had sealed her in this
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tiny cell, dormant, unwaking, to be livened only when it was certain
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her countrymen had either definitely won—or lost.
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The votron's telepathic dirge chronicled the latter fact. She had
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expected nothing else.
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She had only to find the relay beside her cot, press the key that would
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set in motion gigantic prime movers in the heart of the great globe,
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and the conquerors would join the conquered in the wide and nameless
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grave of space.
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But life, now doled out by the second, was too delicious to abandon
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immediately. Her mind, like that of a drowning person, raced hungrily
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over the memories of her past.
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For twenty years, in company with her great father, she had watched
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The Defender
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grow from a vast metal skeleton into a planet-sized
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battle globe. But it had not grown fast enough, for when the Scythian
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globe,
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The Invader
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, sprang out of black space to enslave the budding
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Terran Confederacy,
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The Defender
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was unfinished, half-equipped, and
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undermanned.
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The Terrans could only fight for time and hope for a miracle.
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The Defender
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, commanded by her father, Gordon, Lord Kane, hurled
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itself from its orbit around Procyon and met
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The Invader
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with giant
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fission torpedoes.
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And then, in an intergalactic proton storm beyond the Lesser Magellanic
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Cloud, the globes lost their bearings and collided. Hordes of brute-men
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poured through the crushed outer armor of the stricken
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Defender
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.
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The prone woman stirred uneasily. Here the images became unreal
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and terrible, with the recurrent vision of death. It had taken the
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Scythians nine years to conquer
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The Defender's
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outer shell. Then had
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come that final interview with her father.
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