Roger D. Aycock 20 min read

Solar Exploitations fieldwork is never boring, and the crew of the S.E.2100 least expected to find the greatest surgeons in the Galaxy on a little apple of a planet called Balak.

Roger D. Aycock's 1953 story is a clever first-contact and social-SF puzzle of a strange alien culture. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a survey team stumbles onto a world of master surgeons and a life-and-death problem solved in a wholly unexpected way.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis