James R. Adams 49 min read

Gene Drummond steps from his scout ship and feels Earth's soil under his boots for the first time in fourteen months, New York Spaceport's clamor a balm after grueling research on poisonous Venus.

James R. Adams's 1945 story is a rousing first-contact and space-opera adventure. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful tale where a returning researcher's longed-for homecoming is cut short by a menace of towering steel, and chaos out of the dark between worlds.

In its time

Published in 1945, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Hollingsworth