Robert Donald Locke 15 min read

Two hours before a hundred-and-fifty-parsec jump, Captain Warren is too high on narcol to read his own manifest, and by the time his gray cells clear, the skags have seized control of the ship.

Robert Donald Locke's 1953 story is a fast space opera of a drug-hazed skipper and a hijacked freighter. Sharp, kinetic golden-age SF. Read it for a rousing tale of a routine 'milk run' that turns deadly when a captain's bad habit costs him his ship.

In its time

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

Reading it

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