Bryce Walton 23 min read

Halfway to Venus, Bronson decides it's time to seize the ship, killing the sleeping Orlan with an alloy bar, dumping the body in the cargo bins, and turning toward the captain's unsuspecting back.

Bryce Walton's 1952 story opens on cold-blooded mutiny, building a tense colonization and psi space opera. Sharp, suspenseful golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping tale of murder aboard a Venus-bound rocket, and the reckoning that awaits a killer who thinks he's in control.

In its time

Published in 1952, 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

Herman B. Vestal