“Gentlemen -- the Queen!” a 1942 short story by Wilson “Bob” Tucker

Thanks to Doc Mars of the amazing French-language website Mars & la Science Fiction, you can download and read American mystery, action adventure, and science fiction writer Wilson “Bob” Tucker’s short story “Gentlemen -- the Queen!” (pdf) as it was originally published in the Fall 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly magazine. Revolving around a legend that told of a Wild White Queen in the Martian wastelands, here are the opening lines:

THE three of us, Koenig majoring in electrical engineering, Evans working along advanced lines in chemistry, and myself ... oh, I beg your pardon; allow me to introduce myself. I’m Putnam, Rawleigh ’03. I dabble a bit in astrogation. As I was saying, the three of us were just returned to classes from the Christmas holidays, all feeling a mere touch of nostalgia for the old home town. There had been snow for Christmas, the first since 1983, or so the old-timers insisted. We found it rather disheartening to leave the beautiful snow-covered countryside to return to Rawleigh.

We were attempting to drown the mere touch in several mugs of beer at a little place just off campus, when Tobru joined us. Tobru is a Martian ....

Thanks, Doc Mars! How about another one?