Kris Neville 59 min read

In 2346, democratic Earth wants the humanoid world of Itra to join its Galactic Federation, and sends one man, Shamar, as its secret weapon: as deadly as a sword, and two-edged.

Kris Neville's 1964 story is a sharp military space opera of a lone agent's covert mission. Clever, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a single man is Earth's whole strategy against a rising alien civilization, and the blade the planners wield may cut both ways.

In its time

Published in 1964, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Giunta