Alan Edward Nourse 23 min read

Shabby and weather-beaten, Tam is pulled from the flow of arriving passengers at the spaceport, his passports scrutinized, then ordered to wait, a chilly dread rising in his throat.

Alan E. Nourse's 1952 story opens on unease at an interplanetary border, building a psi-and-space-opera tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a returning traveler's small dread swells into something far larger, and a chain he cannot escape.

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).