Lee Wallot 24 min read

Rocket designers have wrestled for five years with a problem no one can solve, until an angry young scientist, saddled with a foolish old assistant, glares at the impossible.

Lee Wallot's 1956 story sets the frustrated Bronson Corbow against the argumentative Mars Kenton over the scarce fuel that limits humanity to four starships a year. Idea-driven hard SF about breakthrough and obstruction. Read it for a golden-age tale about the friction between genius and its assigned fools.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Mel Hunter