to serve out two full terms for murder, and return to Earth as minor celebrities, with the right to kill one person each. Things, however, do not go quite as planned. Blotto Otto has his scheming wife in mind, only to find out she died the previous year in an unfortunate accident. For Crandall, whose life has been a perpetual series of failures, things go even worse. He intends to kill Frederick Stephenson, a man who stole his great invention. However, on his return, he receives a call from his terrified beloved ex-wife, who thinks she is his intended victim for her series of infidelities whilst they were married. Next he receives a call from his ex-business partner, pleading for his life because he thinks he is the intended victim for secretly cheating him out of vast sums of money. Crandall was previously unaware of either of these things. Still reeling, he meets his own brother, who thinks he is the intended victim, and reveals it was he with whom Crandall's wife was cheating. Finally, Crandall calls his intended victim, Stephenson, the only one who fails to twist and squirm, but instead offers Crandall fair settlement for his invention. Shattered by the day's events, Crandall succumbs to the realization that he is one of life's born losers, and sets out with Otto to have some fun. "The Sickness" (Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955) Plot The Earth finds itself on the brink of catastrophic nuclear war between Russia and the United States. As a last-ditch symbolic gesture of peace and cooperation, the two nations, presided over by India, launch a joint crewed venture to Mars. On their arrival to the red planet, Nicolai Belov, a Russian member of the crew, discovers a vast and amazing city once populated by human-like beings. However, once he returns to the ship he quickly develops a strange fever and is quarantined. This raises tensions in the already fraught atmosphere on board, and threatens to throw power amongst the crew out of balance. Equilibrium is restored, however, when American crew member Smathers also comes down with what is now dubbed Belov's disease. One by one the crew succumb, falling through several stages of fever and delirium, leaving prospects of return ever slimmer, and prospects of war on Earth ever greater: Mutual suspicion over the loss of the mission would trigger the final conflict. Soon just one