Fox B. Holden 22 min read

Vice-colonel Kram ponders one of the worst poker hands he's ever held when he ought to be sweating his tottering government's worst problem: the rebel colonists from Sirius and their deadly G-ray.

Fox B. Holden's 1950 story is a breezy first-contact and military-SF tale of a wily intelligence officer. Fun, fast golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where an unflappable card-player of a colonel takes on a rebellious colony's dangerous new weapon, and wins his way with cunning.

In its time

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

Reading it

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