1
Dearest, by Henry Beam Piper
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dearest, by Henry Beam Piper This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Dearest
Author: Henry Beam Piper
Illustrator: Vincent Napoli
Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #19102]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEAREST ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Weird Tales March 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
[Illustration: "Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate of his."]
Heading by Vincent Napoli
DEAREST
BY
H. BEAM PIPER
Colonel Ashley Hampton chewed his cigar and forced himself to relax, his glance slowly traversing the room, lingering on the mosaic of book-spines in the tall cases, the sunlight splashed on the faded pastel colors of the carpet, the soft-tinted autumn landscape outside the French windows, the trophies of Indian and Filipino and German weapons on the walls. He could easily feign relaxation here in the library of "Greyrock," as long as he looked only at these familiar inanimate things and avoided the five people gathered in the room with him, for all of them were enemies.
There was his nephew, Stephen Hampton, greying at the temples but yo