Randall Garrett 12 min read

Five men, American, Russian, Frenchman, Englishman, Indian, man an orbiting wheel of fusion bombs, watching each other and the Earth below. Then two of them spot an alien ship at Airlock One.

Randall Garrett's 1957 story is a tense first-contact and military-SF tale of Cold War standoff interrupted by the unknown. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a fragile multinational nuclear truce meets something no treaty anticipated, moored just outside the airlock.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Becker