Chester S. Geier 16 min read

In a control room taut as straining fabric, the alien commander Thettumir stares in dismay at the space scanner, one planet, no others for ten light-years, and engines too sick to reach any of them.

Chester S. Geier's 1947 story is an atmospheric first-contact space opera told from the aliens' point of view. Vivid, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story of stranded extraterrestrials facing a single, fateful world, with their dying ship's engines counting down.

In its time

Published in 1947, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Hardison