George A. Whittington 52 min read

As the desert chill falls, ore-seeker Barry Williams crouches tense, hand near his ray gun, waiting, though he knows the weapon is useless, for the dread white mist he's certain will come.

George A. Whittington's 1945 story builds atmospheric colonization space opera around a deadly Martian menace. Vivid, tense golden-age pulp. Read it for a story steeped in the eerie dangers of the Martian night, and the creeping mist that no gun can stop.

In its time

Published in 1945, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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