H. B. Fyfe 15 min read

There are no courts on the isolated world, but there is a Judge. At the roar of landing rockets, Quasmin grabs a salvaged telescope and creeps out cautiously, fearing the newcomers may not be human.

H. B. Fyfe's 1963 story is a sharp colonization and social-SF tale of justice on a lawless frontier. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a marooned man on a far-flung planet warily greets new arrivals, and questions of law and judgment arise where no court has ever reached.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Summers