Randall Garrett 38 min read

One man can eat the native fruit and live where the rest of the marooned crew cannot, the trouble is, nobody knows how.

Randall Garrett's 1959 story strands a military expedition, its storage shed burned, facing starvation amid inedible alien produce and one inexplicable exception. Clever, wry survival SF with a puzzle at its heart. Read it for a smart golden-age tale where the difference between life and death is a secret nobody can crack.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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