Jay Williams 16 min read

One by one, the men of an isolated outpost are being struck down by the same terrible affliction, and no one knows what hunts them.

Jay Williams's 1957 story opens as a limp figure is carried through the airlock, purple-faced and foaming, the latest victim of an unseen menace stalking a beleaguered crew. Tense, claustrophobic space opera with a creeping sense of dread. Read it for gripping golden-age SF about an invisible predator picking off a trapped, frightened band.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas