Alfred Coppel 14 min read

A career of cutting corners taught Malenson that time is the fabric of poverty or greatness, so he commits his crime, boards his ship, and vanishes into the galaxy with five million stolen dollars.

Alfred Coppel's 1949 story spins a taut time-travel tale from a thief who thinks a galaxy makes a perfect hiding place. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story about a man who masters timing to escape justice, and the reckoning that timing can't outrun.

In its time

Published in 1949, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

14 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal