Leigh Brackett 47 min read

A rebel flees the ships of Gantry Hilton, inventor of the Psycho-Adjuster and ruler of men's souls, herded down toward burning Mercury.

Leigh Brackett's 1942 story traps Eric Falken's Falcon in a closing net of tractor-beams above the sun-scorched planet, in a tale of resistance against a tyrant who controls the mind itself. Muscular, atmospheric golden-age space opera. Read it for early Brackett, vivid, hard-driving SF about freedom against a ruler of souls.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Alexander Leydenfrost