James H. Schmitz 26 min read

Sixty years ago, carelessness cost Earth its first true interstellar drive, and now the directors of the Machine gather in the vast Tribunal Hall, sure they'll wring the secret from a lone prisoner.

James H. Schmitz's 1963 story is a tense first-contact and psi tale of a controlling regime and a captive who holds the stars. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a totalitarian Earth's hunger for the drive meets a prisoner, and a truth, it never expected.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Summers