Randall Garrett Robert Silverberg 18 min read

A two-man starship screams down onto the Mojave Spaceport, and big Kendall Stone leaps out running, no time to check his ship, a glance at his watch: 1800, twelve hours till dawn, twelve hours.

Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg's 1956 story is a taut, fast first-contact and space-opera thriller. Sharp, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a race-against-the-clock tale where a man in a top-level hurry must accomplish something desperate before the deadline named in the title falls with the dawn.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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