Chester S. Geier 30 min read

A girl runs barefoot across spring grass, sobbing for breath, terror wild in her eyes, while two boys race after her, yelling threats, closing in on the hunted thing they mean to catch.

Chester S. Geier's 1952 story is a stark, disturbing first-contact and social-SF tale of a child hunted by her own kind. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a tense story whose opening chase conceals a deeper, sadder truth about who the real monster is.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry