Jim Wannamaker 48 min read

A starship is missing, and the investigator sent to find out why lives by a grim maxim scrawled on a trainer's bulkhead: fear is the word.

Jim Wannamaker's 1960 story rides the lift up the Galactic Survey Building with a troubleshooter whose last assignment earned Interstel its fearsome reputation, into a tense tale of space, discipline, and cost. Taut, atmospheric SF about the unforgiving nature of the void. Read it for hard-edged golden-age SF that respects space as a lethal, indifferent adversary.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Roy G. Krenkel