The Rim Gods / The High Hex

THE RIM GODS by A. Bertram Chandler: John Grimes, astronautical superintendent of Rim Runners and commanding officer of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, was tired of being a desk-bound space commodore. So when the chance came for him to do a little personal astronautical trouble-shooting, he didn't ask who, why or what--he just went. Which is how he found himself involved with time-space worlds, predatory starfish, and legendary characters apparently come to life. That's what can happen when you are out at the galaxy's edge and call forth The Rim Gods. THE HIGH HEX by Laurence M. Janifer & S. J. Treibich: "The satellite—Space Station 11—is beaming broadcasts down, in bad Swahili apparently, calling on Africa to rise up and destroy the non-Africans ... "The African states are in their usual mildly chaotic condition. We hoped that Station 11 would provide a running check, and help to quiet matters. instead they are inflaming the situation. The messages have been getting stranger and stranger. They now claim to have destroyed Station 1, and are using that bit of propaganda to bolster their try for supremacy. There've been a lot of drumbeats lately, too... There was only one experienced space team available on the surface to send up to investigate. That was the former crew of the now disintegrated Station 1, a group as odd in themselves perhaps as the drum-beaters still in orbit. So the U.N. sent them up again on a find-and-report mission—and to make sure that they would be able to cope with anything they found, they added one more member to the band - a fully operative African witch doctor!