Hal K. Wells 38 min read

Facing a six-hour deadline of death, young Larry raids a hostile world of rat-men and tinkling Devil Crystals to save the woman strapped into the projector.

Hal K. Wells's 1931 story flings its hero through an atomic projector into a lurid other-dimensional adventure of alien menace. Breathless, colorful early pulp SF. Read it for classic 1930s planetary romance, a ticking clock, a captive fiancée, and a world of crystalline evil.

In its time

Published in 1931, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

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