Roger D. Aycock 5 min read

Lighting his last cigarette, a doomed spaceman broadcasts to Earth's listening millions: their air is nearly gone, the riddled Luna V will never land, and four ships before them simply blew apart.

Roger D. Aycock's 1951 story builds taut hard-SF suspense around a lethal mystery killing every ship that nears its target. Gripping, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a tense tale of pioneers dying one by one, racing to solve the deadly secret before the last of them is gone.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal