Mack Reynolds 17 min read

A newsroom phone rings: a man is coming in from Luna with a radiation-burned child for emergency treatment. Just another routine story, until it isn't.

Mack Reynolds's 1951 story spins a fast space-opera and human-interest tale from a mercy flight down from the Moon. Sharp, warm golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a jaded newsman's hundredth 'sick spaceman' story turns into something that matters after all.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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