Mark Clifton Alex Apostolides 27 min read

The final test is at hand: an instrument ship flung into space from a Nevada bunker, to learn whether the flimsy bodies of men can endure out there, with a watching world not all wishing it well.

Clifton and Apostolides's 1953 story is a taut first-contact and social-SF tale set at the dawn of the space age. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story of the tense hours before humanity's first true reach for space, and the surprise waiting in the void.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban