The Unteleported Man was first published in Fantastic Stories magazine in 1964.
Rachmael ben Applebaum suspects something shady is going on at the Whale’s Mouth colony in the Fomalhaut system. A company called THL has a teleportation device that can take people from Earth to Whale’s Mouth in only fifteen minutes. Strangely it’s only a one-way trip, and Rachmael thinks the video from THL showing a paradise full of happy colonists is being faked. Rachmael owns a now-obsolete freighter company, but with the help of the police agency Lies Incorporated he plans to take his last remaining ship to the Fomalhaut system, in a trip that will take eighteen years one way, to find out for sure what is going on at Whale’s Mouth.
Ace Books asked Dick to expand this novella-length story so they could publish it as a full novel, but they turned down the second part he wrote. Instead they ended up publishing The Unteleported Man as one half of an Ace Double. The copy I read was backed with Dr. Futurity. The expanded material (Rachmael on Whale’s Mouth after being shot by an LSD-tipped dart) was inserted somewhat inelegantly into the middle of the story and eventually published as Lies, Inc. in 1983 after Dick died.
Cast of characters
See Lies, Inc.