Charles L. Fontenay 25 min read

When murder happens on a spaceship, the suspects are at an absolute minimum, and Lefler, forty minutes overdue relieving a captain who's never late, is that minimum.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1957 story stages a tense locked-room murder mystery in the confines of a starship. Sharp, suspenseful golden-age SF. Read it for a taut whodunit in space, where the tiny crew makes every alibi, and every suspect, count.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Richard Kluga