Basil Wells 22 min read

A bullet slaps rotted leaves and dirt into Gram Treb's eyes as he worms backward to a tree, locked in a bloody war-duel with young Harl Neilson on a mile-wide island high above Earth.

Basil Wells's 1954 story is a tense first-contact and social-SF tale of ritual combat in orbit. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a taut story where two men fight a sanctioned duel on a tiny orbital island, and a sixth sense honed by survival may not be enough to break the stalemate.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Summers