Bill Garson 24 min read

Far off in the Venusian jungle, Chameleon men lift their mottled faces toward the sound and an Earthman patrol breaks into a run, as beside the prison, a patch of ground quivers and is still.

Bill Garson's 1947 story is a fast-moving space-opera adventure of a jungle-planet prison break. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing tale of escape and intrigue on a lush, dangerous Venus, where an escapee's flight becomes a test worth the fabled Pearl.

In its time

Published in 1947, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

H. W. Kiemle