Alfred Coppel 31 min read

Three weeks into the Second Martian War, the officers of the destroyer Darkside grimly endure the Flotilla Commodore sizing them up, resolved to return his scrutiny doubled in spades.

Alfred Coppel's 1953 story is a taut military space opera of shipboard tension and looming battle. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a cramped warship, saddled with a flag officer, faces the perils of a war among the planets.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Raymond F. Houlihan