George O. Smith 25 min read

A tunnel to Venus works perfectly, except that it's stranded a woman on the poisoned planet, and she doesn't know her right from her left.

George O. Smith's 1961 story pits the narrator and Project Tunnel's director against a life-or-death navigation problem: Holly Carter made it to Venus, but bringing her back hinges on directions a disoriented, blacking-out traveler can't reliably give. Clever, suspenseful hard SF built on a genuinely ingenious predicament. Read it for a tense golden-age puzzle where left and right mean life and death.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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