Donald E. Westlake 52 min read

Harvey Ricks has always bitten off more than he could chew, and somehow chewed it, but now, standing for the first time in the vacuum of space, he wonders if this is the bite that chokes him.

Donald E. Westlake's 1961 story is a taut hard-SF space opera of a cocky man facing the void. Sharp, well-paced golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping tale where an overreacher's habit of getting in over his head finally meets the unforgiving emptiness of space.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay