Frank Belknap Long 43 min read

A man who once broke the bank at Callisto City and walked out broke goes hunting among the graveyard of dead starships.

Frank Belknap Long's 1948 story opens on miles of black, battered hulls stretching into a red sunset, old ships bought for a song, and the legend-without-substance who still wants to go adventuring. Melancholy, romantic space opera about faded glory and the lure of the rim. Read it for evocative golden-age SF suffused with the poetry of derelict ships and second chances.

In its time

Published in 1948, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay