James Causey 31 min read

On a strange planet ninety light-years from home, they time-study the four-armed 'Terms,' driving the alien laborers to a desperate glow of effort, for there's a limit to how far you can drive them.

James Causey's 1953 story sharpens its colonization-and-social-SF tale into a pointed parable of labor and exploitation. Sharp, angry golden-age SF. Read it for a story that watches human overseers push their alien workforce toward a reckoning.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Jack Shapiro