Appearing in "The Pike!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- "Roundheads"
- Harry Rossmoor
- Dick
Antagonists:
- Carogtuw
- Irish troops
Other Characters:
Locations:
Synopsis for "The Pike!"
Featuring not one, but three tales of thrilling, fantastic amazement! "Gold!" tells of Spanish Conquistadors who try to steal gold from Mexican Indians . . . and get a nasty come-uppance!' 'The Pike" is set against the seventeenth century intrigue of Oliver Cromwell's England! "Ambrose Abemathy's Amazing Adventure Apparatus" stars an absent-minded inventor who just stumbles upon the most awesome contraption imaginable!
Appearing in "Gold!"
Featured Characters:
- unnamed priest
Supporting Characters:
- unnamed king
Antagonists:
- Conquistadors
- Díaz (First appearance; dies)
- José
Other Characters:
- Aztec citizens
- Zetu
- Xochi
- Itza
- Hernán Cortés (Mentioned)
- Tlatoc (Mentioned)
- Quetzalcoatl (Mentioned)
Locations:
- Mexico
- unnamed Aztec city
Synopsis for "Gold!"
Among Cortés' Spanish conquistadors in Aztec territory, a few of them led by Díaz secede and look for gold to loot. They find an Aztec town where the heathens perform human sacrifices, and Díaz investigates to find out where the gold comes from. He finally discovers an alchemist who tells the alchemical process to create gold. Mistakenly believing the Aztec was speaking literally, Díaz drinks a beverage to become a transmutter, a King Midas-like being - and is poisoned. However, when his body is sacrificed to the Aztec gods, Díaz's heart had turned into literal gold.
Appearing in "Ambrose A. Abernathy's Amazing Adventure Apparatus"
Featured Characters:
- Ambrose A. Abernathy
Supporting Characters:
- Ann Abernathy
- Albert
Antagonists:
- Professor Edwin Grimmley
Other Characters:
- lion
- man from the zoological department
- engineers
- the dean (Mentioned)
- Thomas Edison (Mentioned)
Locations:
- New Jersey
- New Jersey College
- Abernathy's lab
- Gym
- Zoological department
- New Jersey College
- Pennsylvania
- Philadelphia
- Centennial Exposition
- Philadelphia
- San Francisco
Items:
- Adventure Apparatus
- tranquilizer gun
Vehicles:
- train
- Grimmley's flying bicycle
Synopsis for "Ambrose A. Abernathy's Amazing Adventure Apparatus"
New Jersey College, 1876. Professor Abernathy has built an experimental machine that creates adventure around himself, thou the dean's son Al mocks the mere idea. Abernath's rival Professor Grimmely intends to steal the device in convoluted ways, to be the first to show such a marvel at the Philadelphia fair. While the situations become growingly unlikely, including Al's uncharacteristic heroics to stop Grimmley, in the end flying-bicycle-riding Grimmley does steal the machine - only to be ridiculed at Philadelphia. He sells the item to a San Franciscan, who buys it as a joke for a pittance - and, when activated, the device causes the 1906 earthquake that levels the city!
Appearing in "Death Stroke"
Featured Characters:
- Manilak the Shaman (First appearance; dies)
- Dimitry Grigorovich
Supporting Characters:
Other Characters:
- Czar Nicholas (Mentioned)
Locations:
Synopsis for "Death Stroke"
An elderly, failed shaman longs for death at the hands of his polar bear totem, but the bear would rather kill a white man, a Russian fugitive who's also seeking death for his failure at overthrowing the Czar. The totem claims he'd be back in three months for one of the two men. The shaman becomes a father figure for the white man, as a way to cleanse his failures of children he could not save, and convinces the young man to try his coup again. The shamn confronts the bear, killing him, and going to the otherworld as a hunter with a clean conscience.