Ray C. Noll 36 min read

The nine-man crew lines up tensely in the companionway; this assembly is their idea, not the commander's, and they want a decision, a forced choice narrowed to just two grim alternatives.

Ray C. Noll's 1955 story builds a taut space-opera drama of command and crisis aboard a Mars-bound ship. Sharp, character-driven golden-age SF. Read it for a tense tale about leadership under pressure, when a captain must choose and the crew is done waiting.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry