S. P. Meek 44 min read

A telephone jangles at the post hospital, answered by a spasm of coughing, a lieutenant choking out that his range crew is caught in a cloud of poison gas. Send an ambulance, and gas masks.

S. P. Meek's 1932 story opens on a chilling emergency, building an adventure and hard-SF tale of a mysterious deadly gas. Vivid, tense golden-age pulp. Read it for a gripping story where a lethal cloud descends on an army range, and science must race to counter it.

In its time

Published in 1932, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

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