Ivar Jorgensen 15 min read

The murder is committed ten minutes before the alien ship lifts, discovered ten minutes after blast-off, and the killer boasts of it, not knowing how slender a thread the whole invasion hangs by.

Ivar Jorgensen's 1956 story builds a tense first-contact and social-SF tale around a killing that imperils a secret invasion. Sharp, suspenseful golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where one hillman's careless murder threatens to unravel an alien conquest.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry