Randall Garrett 17 min read

A woman stares complacently down the barrel of a gun with both hands raised, coolly accusing her captors of biting the hand that feeds them.

Randall Garrett's 1958 story opens on wisecracking Nikki Varden and the oily, obvious villain Van Ostrand, spinning a tale of crime and time with a sharp comic voice. Fast, wry time-travel SF with hard-boiled patter. Read it for snappy golden-age SF where the banter is as quick as the double-crosses.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller