If you read Armageddon 2419, by Phil Nowlan, you will find yourself liking Anthony Rogers, the time-displaced protagonist. Considering that "Buck" Rogers would move on to comic strips (which is where he gets his nickname), radio shows, movie serials and TV, he is certainly a hero with lasting appeal.
But the really good part of Nowlan's story--and the reason I've re-read it with joy a number of times since I first encountered it in high school--is Nowlan's fascination with creating futuristic technology and then creating military tactics appropriate for that technology. Armageddon 2419 is stuffed with anti-gravity devises, disintegrator rays and small arms that fire explosive rockets. The good guys and bad guys both use their weapons in increasingly innovative ways, each developing new tactics in response to what their opponents are doing. Characterization is subordinate to cool tech, and the story works just fine that way.
"Space Guards," published posthumously in the May 1940 issue of Astounding, takes pretty much the same route. In fact, the simularity of the technology (including rocket pistols, anti-gravity and disintegrator rays) places it in my mind in the same universe as Buck Rogers.
The two protagonists are officers in the Space Guard, Linda Darlington and Bob Manley. They are likeable and believable heroes, but there's not a lot of dimension to their characters. That they inevitably fall in love is predictable, but Nowlan wisely just hints at their true feelings a few times and does not allow this to interfere with the appealing part of the story--which is, of course, cool technology and well-described action.
The story opens with the two heroes lost in a foggy, nigh-inpenatrable swamp on Venus. They had been sent on a scouting mission to locate the base of a master criminal. But the rocket glider they used to leave their mothership has disappeared, there's too much atmospheric interference to use their radios and... well, the two are in trouble. Their trouble seems to increase when they are captured by a native tribe.
This, though, proves to be beneficial. The master criminal is from Earth and is setting up his own empire on Venus, funding it with a fortune in the form of a rare mineral he stole from Mars. He's hired well-equipped mercenaries--taken from the dregs of Earth, Martian and Venusian societies--and made them a sort of aristocracy. The native tribes don't like them, but don't have modern weapons needed to fight back effectively.
But clever tactics can make up for a lot. Bob and Linda accompany the natives when they ambush a mercenary column. Surprise and an pre-planned avalanche take out a lot of the bad guys and force the rest to run for it.
The two Space Guards trail them. There's a nasty encounter with a dinosaur-like creature, but this in turn leads them to meet a Martian woman who is working undercover. She knows where the secret base is located and has an idea for how to get the others inside, kidnap the master criminal (and the criminal's girlfriend, who is also his co-leader) and make a getaway under the noises of the mercenaries.
The plan goes less than smoothly, but the heroes think fast on their feet, improvise variations to their plans and eventually make their attempt to capture the crooks.
The bad guys' secret base is pretty cool, foreshadowing the sort of base that Doctor No or SPECTRE would be building back on Earth for James Bond to find and destroy. Nowlan has his heroes using the technology available to them in effective and clever ways. The pacing of the novella is fast and the action is all fun. "Space Guards" isn't quite the classic that his Buck Rogers tales would become, but Nowlan still knows how to spin a fun science fiction yarn.
You can read this one online HERE.
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