George O. Smith 53 min read

Thirty hours out from Mars, the Solar Queen races along her invisible course, held centered by the trick beam-cams of Venus Equilateral, until the day she must dodge meteors and loses the beam.

George O. Smith's 1944 story is a clever hard-SF space opera from his beloved Venus Equilateral series. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a story that mines real orbital and communications problems for suspense, as a ship strays off the guiding beam.

In its time

Published in 1944, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban