Ray Cummings 55 min read

Part of the narrator's job aboard the Seven Stars is to watch the girl, no hardship, since platinum-haired Brenda Carson is easy to look at, on a voyage bound for the dull-red ball of Mars.

Ray Cummings's 1940 story is a colorful space-opera mystery of intrigue and a haunting presence aboard a Mars-bound ship. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing tale of a beautiful passenger, a watchful narrator, and a phantom stalking the spaceways.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Don Lynch