Randall Garrett 1 hr 13 min read

There are two kinds of fools, and the deadliest are the ones who don't know it. A pilot inches toward a slowly spinning asteroid.

Randall Garrett's 1962 story (as Johnathan Blake Mackenzie) opens with Captain St. Simon warily approaching a great mass of rock turning perceptibly on its axis, footing the drive pedals as he closes on the spinning hulk. Solid, competent space opera with Garrett's easy technical confidence. Read it for capable-hero SF and a nicely realized hazard of the asteroid belt.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 13 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

George Schelling