Don Berry 18 min read

Alarm bells scream off the metal walls of the wardroom; Cressey leaps up, spilling a checkerboard, and races for the suitlocker, heart pounding, unable to tell fear from readiness.

Don Berry's 1956 story is a taut military space opera of combat scramble and a pilot's inner nerve. Tense, kinetic golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story of space-navy men racing to battle stations, and the fine line between a fighting man's fear and his fire.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller