Mark Clifton 38 min read

In a lifeboat fleeing a wrecked starship, the only woman aboard senses the two young men have something they're afraid to tell her.

Mark Clifton's 1955 story rides with the sharp-tongued 'Miss Kitty' as she drowses toward Earth beside her two rescuers, half-hearing a secret they're steeling themselves to reveal. A thoughtful, character-driven piece of social SF built on a small human situation with large implications. Read it for perceptive golden-age SF about gender, survival, and the things people can't quite say.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

38 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller