UNDERLAY

Harry the Flat is dead and buried in the backstretch of Aqueduct Raceway. This is causing the Mob no end of trouble on the betting side, so Harry's oldest and dearest friend--now carrying on with Harry's widow, Gertrude nee Hawkins, in Harry's absence, and in debt to the Mob for $1500--is persuaded to dig him up after the eighth race. Tony Winner, low level Mob boss, is very specific on this point, and to that end has had a time bomb surgically implanted in our hero's thigh to impress upon him the urgency of this matter.

So on this fateful day, off...

The space program has finally lost its novelty and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skillful PR admen preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine, but Colonel Richard Martin has a different story . . . of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond their breaking points, of official indifference towards his own shattered life. Martin had been to the moon and back, but he would never be sent there again, suffering a nervous breakdown in orbit. He is put under wraps until the pilot of a capsule loaded with nuclear weaponry goes berserk and unleashes a...