F. L. Wallace 28 min read

On a barely-explored world, a settler falls ill with an unknown infection while counting out gifts to the natives, unafraid, help is only a flight away.

F. L. Wallace's 1955 story sets Lee Bolden among the hazards of newly-settled Van Daamas, where the price of life may be a life for a life. Tense, well-observed first-contact SF about frontier medicine and alien reckoning. Read it for a thoughtful golden-age story where casual confidence meets an unfamiliar rule.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Diehl