Charles V. De Vet 25 min read

Kaiser reads the message a third time before he grasps what's wrong: the tapes from base have started coming through in inane baby talk. 'OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY.'

Charles V. De Vet's 1957 story spins an eerie first-contact and colonization tale from a scout's mysteriously infantilized communications on a rainy alien world. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a creeping wrongness in the radio traffic hints at something happening to the men back home.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Turpin