Bryce Walton 42 min read

On a barren asteroid, hypnotized and armored in amnesia, Cadmus waits to step into a matter transmitter that will hurl him to Mars, and his final destiny.

Bryce Walton's 1952 story opens on a tense, mysterious mission far in the future, building a post-apocalyptic space opera of engineered memory and looming catastrophe. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping tale of a man sent, mind sealed, toward a doom he can't remember.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal