The Menace From Earth

[Read by Rob McQuay] From a master of science fiction comes eight startling stories of time and space. In ''The Year of the Jackpot,'' a statistician charts a curve of unusual happenings throughout the earth, only to find that his facts and figures prove the approach of the end of the world. In ''By His Bootstraps,'' a man steps thirty thousand years into time and is trapped in the fourth dimension with three strange, yet oddly familiar, people. In ''Goldfish Bowl,'' people disappear one by one, in great swirling balls of fire, and are held captive in space by beings of vastly superior intelligence. Also in this collection of short stories originally published in 1959 are ''Columbus Was a Dope,'' ''The Manace from Earth,'' ''Sky Lift,'' ''Project Nightmare,'' and ''Water Is for Washing.'' SUMMARY: In gigantic caves on the Moon, the low gravity allows the colonists to achieve the age-old dream of strapping wings to their arms and flying like birds. But Holly Jones's other dreams are threatened by the arrival from Earth of a beautiful woman who has mesmerized her boyfriend. Back on Earth, a mathematician charts an upsurge in strange events to predict the most incredible event of all. Elsewhere, a man travels through a time gate into the future, seeking free will and finding something very different. A showcase for the talents of a master storyteller. Reprint. Earth seems a sinister planet hanging in the sky. But to the Pluto colony, Earth Satellite Base holds the only possible reprieve from a terrifying death sentence. And on Earth itself, alien intelligence prowls the skies, kidnapping people for its own inhuman amusement - book cover.