John Hollis Mason 7 min read

On a grassy plain, a shimmering golden cylinder stands over two crumpled figures, one alien, one nearly human, both still, in a silence that makes the mysterious tableau all the stranger.

John Hollis Mason's 1942 story opens on an eerie scene of arrival and death, building a first-contact and military-SF tale. Atmospheric, intriguing golden-age SF. Read it for a story of an alien scout's fateful mission among the tree-dwelling people of a new world.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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