Frank Freeman 6 min read

'You're inviting certain destruction by holding me prisoner,' squeals the squat, ugly creature in its wooden cage, but surveyor Walt Granger just swings a boot against the two-by-fours and grunts.

Frank Freeman's 1955 story is a wry first-contact and space-opera tale of a captured alien's dire warnings. Clever, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a geological surveyor cages a stranded alien and dismisses its threats, until the promised stellar vengeance begins to look all too real.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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