James McKimmey 45 min read

This is Nicholas Caine's last run, and it doesn't look right or feel right or taste right, even the little jetcopter feels sluggish, though he knows it's really his nerves.

James McKimmey's 1953 story builds taut suspense around a weary operative's final, wrong-feeling job. Sharp, atmospheric space opera. Read it for a tense tale of a man on his last assignment, when everything he's learned to trust tells him something is about to go badly wrong.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas