Randall Garrett 15 min read

Threading Fless territory in his little ship, Marten is caught hard and fast by an alien tractor-beam, time only to gasp a warning to Earth Central before the enemy dampers kill his radio.

Randall Garrett's 1958 story is a taut first-contact and military-SF tale of capture behind enemy lines. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a captured scout, held by inscrutable aliens, must find a way to turn his imprisonment against his captors.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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