H. B. Fyfe 27 min read

From inside the Mars dome the night sky is beautiful; step outside and it turns raw and cruel, and an old-timer likes to stand there, thinking of the men who groped out into the dark.

H. B. Fyfe's 1960 story frames its space-opera tale with the hard romance of the Martian frontier and the price paid by its pioneers. Evocative, reflective golden-age SF. Read it for a story about the far reach of the spaceways and the fee the frontier exacts.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller