Roger D. Aycock 14 min read

On the third peaceful night of the Marco Four's landfall, navigator Farrell watches two blank-faced Arzian fishermen posted on a coral islet, their triangular faces turned stolidly toward the beach.

Roger D. Aycock's 1953 story is a sharp, unsettling first-contact and psi-powers tale. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a survey crew's idyllic alien paradise, and its placidly fishing natives, prove to conceal a subtle and disquieting trap.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Bob Martin