James R. Adams 15 min read

Hard-bitten Interplanetary Patrol men, drilled to march with picks and shovels like common ditch-diggers, seethe under a sergeant who sympathizes but obeys orders.

James R. Adams's 1946 story opens on the grumbling ranks and their put-upon sergeant Hallihan, setting up a first-contact crisis on Saturn's great moon. Brisk, character-flavored military space opera. Read it for a golden-age tale that finds humor and tension in soldiers stuck with the worst detail on Titan.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Petrizzo