Mack Reynolds 29 min read

They gave him a gold watch and a banquet full of speeches, but what's more important, Man's conquest of space, or one spaceman's life? Si Pond, retiring, is about to make his own answer.

Mack Reynolds's 1963 story is a sharp social-SF space opera about the human cost of the space program. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a wry, humane tale where a veteran spaceman, feted into retirement, decides that his own life is worth rather more than the brass would like.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Norman Nodel