Alan Edward Nourse 23 min read

Sneaked out of town past the reporters, Scotty Johnson sips his last coffee with the boys before Zero Hour, joking with the waitress to hide what everyone at the table already knows.

Alan E. Nourse's 1954 story builds a taut, human hard-SF space opera around the eve of a dangerous flight. Sharp, well-observed golden-age SF. Read it for a story about courage and camaraderie in the quiet hours before a man risks everything.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry