Henry Guth 16 min read

Mercurian night settles black over the Q City Spaceport, and old Shano, skeletal, arthritic, coughing, slips polarized goggles over his eyes and watches the liner Stardust sink slowly down.

Henry Guth's 1949 story is a moody space-opera adventure of a worn-out spacer's homecoming. Atmospheric, wistful golden-age pulp. Read it for an evocative tale of a tired old hand at a Mercury spaceport, and the last relief he seeks after a lifetime beating around the planets.

In its time

Published in 1949, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal