Randall Garrett 41 min read

A dead city of a very high order on an utterly useless planet can only mean one thing, a shipping transfer point, and a scholar who came to prove it has vanished.

Randall Garrett's 1959 story opens on a tantalizing archaeological riddle and a missing man, launching a clever detective-in-space investigation across the galaxy. Sharp, logic-driven social SF with a mystery's pull. Read it for a witty golden-age tale where a ruined alien city is a puzzle nobody can quite read.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Martinez