Jesse F. Bone 50 min read

'Sir, this Johnson is a spy, is it permitted to slay him?' hisses the robed Antarian, sidling up to the Earthman's desk to observe the elaborate native formalities of assassination.

Jesse F. Bone's 1959 story opens on wry alien bureaucracy before its first-contact and psi premise unfolds. Funny, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale where dealing with a spy on Antar is tangled in ceremony, and the real surprise is who's riding along inside whom.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Wallace Wood