H. Beam Piper 47 min read

An occult police force may divert human suspicion and supply comforting explanations, and when a strange beast escapes into a rural county, agents from another timeline move quietly to cover it up.

H. Beam Piper's 1948 story is the first of his celebrated Paratime tales, a clever cross-time policing adventure. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for the debut of a beloved series, where a menace loose in our world is hunted by police from a parallel history.

In its time

Published in 1948, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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