Starstreak: Stories of Space, edited by Betty Owen, is a sci-fi anthology published by Scholastic Books Inc. for its schools catalogue in 1979-80. The stories are lightly edited for younger readers. Not all are set in space and some don't explicitly have a science fiction theme, but they sample from a cross-section of authors, many of whom are either well known in the genre or living legends of it at the time of publication (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and John W. Campbell all have entries), and it constitutes an excellent entry-level SF anthology for school-age children.
The stories include:
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. This novella-length story, which would later form the basis of John Carpenter's The Thing, kicks off the anthology and tells the story of the men in an Antarctic research base who find a spacecraft entombed in the ice, together with one of its occupants not very far away. After inadvertently destroying the ship in an attempt to break into it, they bring the creature back to their base and thaw it out, unwisely following the advice of their biologist that it not be fixed in formalin. Too late, they realize that what they have in their midst a is living, intelligent, hostile creature that can make itself appear as any man or beast, and the race is on to not only survive but contain the infestation before spring rolls around and makes it possible for the creature to leave. This one is well known and (in)famous enough to have its own trope page
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Collecting Team by Robert Silverberg. Human botanists on a world teeming with life find the drive of their ship repeatedly being sabotaged. Will they manage to escape, or have they become the next exhibit?
The Haunted Space Suit, by Arthur C. Clarke. A technician on a space communications satellite goes out in a powered spacesuit to retrieve some random junk. Halfway there, he hears noises he can't account for and remembers a friend of his who died in about the same position when the suit failed. Panic grips him as he realizes he might be wearing the same suit; repaired, reissued... and maybe even haunted by the ghost of the man who died in it. This short story is published in some anthologies under the title "Who's There?"
Condition of Employment, by Clifford D. Simak. Anson Cooper, space engineer, is living on Earth, almost destitute, and desperately homesick for Mars. Just let him get there and he'll settle down and never leave. He finds a battered old ship whose Captain is happy to cut corners in order to give him a job because the cargo is desperately needed back home, and endures the hellish mission to get back to the place of his roots. When he gets there, though, his homesickness is not all that it seems to be.
After the Sirens by Hugh Hood. A man and a woman are woken up by sirens. They turn on the radio to find it warning them of a nuclear attack in mere minutes. Can they assemble what they need to survive and take shelter before the bomb hits?
The Spaceman Cometh, by Henry Gregor Felsen. An alien whose job it was to explore space for planets that might pose a threat to his race and tag them for annihilation defected to Earth, settled down and started a family. All is well until one of his fellow-aliens turns up looking for him...
The Nine Billion Names of God, by Arthur C Clarke. A Tibetan monastery buys a computer in order to accelerate its project of recording the Nine Billion Names of God. A project that should have taken hundreds of years will be reduced to just months, but what will be the consequences for the universe at large when the job is done?
The Rotifers, by Robert Abernathy. A boy looks down his microscope and sees the teeming life that inhabits the pond in his backyard. It soon becomes clear to him that the tiny zooplankton are planning terrible things, but is this just a fever dream or has he stumbled upon a terrible microbial conspiracy?
Does A Bee Care?, by Isaac Asimov. An alien being exerts its influence on key scientific figures through history in order to return to space and achieve adult form.
