William F. Jenkins, writing as "Murray Leinster", began his career writing for the pulp magazines, publishing his first story in H. L. Menken's "The Smart Set" in 1916, just short of his 20th birthday. He wrote in a variety of genres, including detective stories, westerns, horror, and romance as well as SF. He's credited with being the first to use the concept of "Alternate History", which has blossomed into a genre of its own. He continued publishing into the 1960's, and wrote movie and TV scripts as well as stories and novels.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Leinster
"The Wailing Asteroid" dates from 1960. Strange signals are being received from far off in space. The source is a remote asteroid. The sounds carried by the signals aren't new to inventor Joe Burke. He's been hearing them in his dreams since he was a small child. The dreams are apparently provoked by a fragment of crystalline material brought back from a cave in Europe that Joe has kept beneath his pillow.
Using technology learned from his dreams, Joe builds a ship in his backyard to go and investigate, taking along his assistant and their girlfriends. The asteroid is a fortress, built to guard against a great menace, and abandoned millenia ago by its garrison. The signals are warnings, and a call to the vanished garrison to resume their stations. The menace the fortress was built to defend against has been detected and is coming our way.
The book got a 1967 British film adaptation as "The Terrornauts", scripted by SF writer John Brunner.
This is a MobiPocket book, with cover, author photo, proper table of contents and an attempt at proper formatting (IE, no forced justification), with Standard Compression. It's also an excuse to learn something about Book Designer and MobiPocket Creator. Comments welcomed.
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Dennis