The Fiend

'''Pohl, Frederik. "The Fiend."' Playboy'' April 1964. Coll. Digits and Dastards. New York: Balantine,1966. See Contento Index for reprints in anthologies.

The captain of a starship receives a sixteen-year old girl whom he wishes "to possess . . . as a slave." Story ends with revelation "that Dandridge is a cyborg whose mind infuses the ship, while his body lies on 'coldside Mercury'—for unspecified crimes, though by implication they parallel this incident" (Thomas Clareson, Frederik Pohl [Mercer Island, Washington: Starmont, 1987]: 80).

(RDE, 30/07/95, 14Nov15)