Andre Norton 11 min read

In deep space, a colorless, overlooked woman and a blind man may have the one advantage that matters where humans cannot see.

Andre Norton's 1953 story introduces the drab, gray, easily-ignored Steena of the spaceways, whose quiet listening in dockside dives leads to a haunted derelict and a truth only she can perceive. A quietly brilliant, oft-anthologized tale about handicap turned advantage. Read it for classic Norton, spare, atmospheric, and one of the genre's finest short stories about seeing what others can't.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).