E. E. Smith 43 min read

Tellurian Pharmaceuticals is civilization's oldest, most hidebound drug house, its board limited by unwritten law to men over seventy, and against that inertia the young dash like waves.

E.E. Smith's 1942 story is a hard-SF space opera of drugs, industry, and a deadly menace. Sharp, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for a Doc Smith tale where corporate conservatism and super-science collide, and a storm on the planet Deka demands more than the old guard can imagine.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Morey