Piers Anthony 26 min read

A footprint two inches deep and nine feet across, then another, then a whole trail, Charles Tinnerman studies the marks of a titanic creature stalking the alien forest.

Piers Anthony's 1963 story, an early work by the future master, is a taut first-contact and colonization tale of a monstrous alien beast. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where colonists on a strange world track the huge, five-footed thing whose trail winds through their forest.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay