F. E. Hardart 18 min read

Nat Starrett's searchlight reveals a low, circular cavern where black, thick waves of an acid-reeking lake lap at his feet, hungry tongues of the stuff reaching up as if to pull him under.

F. E. Hardart's 1941 story is an atmospheric horror-tinged space opera. Vivid, creeping golden-age pulp. Read it for a moody monster yarn where a spacer, deep in an alien cavern, confronts a living menace lurking in a viscous pool, in the grand tradition of pulp cosmic horror.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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