Randall Garrett Robert Silverberg 19 min read

A darkly handsome stranger grins at psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence from the wrong side of a strange, deadly gun, and asks about a beautiful, empty-eyed patient named Bette Bauer.

Garrett and Silverberg's 1958 story builds a tense first-contact and psi tale from a mysterious intruder and a mind-blanked patient. Sharp, fast golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where a psychiatric mystery opens onto an alien menace reaching toward Earth.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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