Paul W. Fairman 31 min read

Holloway's face is drawn and ravaged, his bloodshot eyes in black pits, 'I must talk, I've got to tell you about it,' he insists to the examiner, unable to stop the words tumbling out.

Paul W. Fairman's 1956 story is a tense, atmospheric first-contact and space-opera tale. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a haunted survivor pours out the account of a big-game hunting expedition among the stars gone catastrophically, unforgettably wrong.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry