Raymond Z. Gallun 29 min read

A scoundrel and confidence man works toward a great dream worth far more than the damage his swindles cost, out among the fifty-million-year-old footprints on the Moon.

Raymond Z. Gallun's 1946 story pairs the wary young greenhorn Copeland with the roguish Jess Brinker at Tycho Station, framing a tale of vision behind villainy. Thoughtful, character-rich golden-age space opera. Read it for a story that finds a great ambition inside a small-time crook, amid the relics of ancient Mars.

In its time

Published in 1946, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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