Charles L. Harness 50 min read

'Die now, die now,' murmurs the votron in Evelyn Kane's ears as she wakes, the cubicle crushing her chest, sealed dormant nine years, to wake only when the war is decided.

Charles L. Harness's 1949 story is a rich, inventive military space opera of a soldier woken to a fateful duty. Vivid, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a long-dormant sentinel is roused by a heartbreaking command, and must carry out her orders in the aftermath of a war among the stars.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Al McWilliams