Theodore L. Thomas 15 min read

Three men bend over a chart in the busy quiet of a satellite and recompute the orbit: they'll pass within fifty feet of the other satellite. Too close. Should they move, or make the rival do it?

Theodore L. Thomas's 1958 story is a taut hard-SF and military-SF tale of Cold War brinkmanship in orbit. Sharp, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where national pride, played out fifty feet apart in space, turns a simple orbital adjustment into a dangerous test of nerve.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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