Ray Cummings 36 min read

The weird purple glow of Planetoid-150 fills a quarter of the sky as Roy Atwood nears the end of his lonely journey, seeking the treasured Xarite his father glimpsed from Earth.

Ray Cummings's 1942 story sends a lone prospector far beyond Mars after a mysterious substance in a colorful space-opera quest. Vivid, imaginative golden-age pulp. Read it for a solitary voyage to a strange glowing world and the perils that guard its treasure.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John B. Musacchia