Lester Del Rey 19 min read

The three-hundred-ton silth plods across the barren land aching with hunger, while inside it, the converted nerve-network that is Arnek broods against the inflexible logic of his mate Ptarra.

Lester del Rey's 1963 story is a clever, poignant first-contact and social-SF tale of alien symbionts. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story told from within a monstrous beast, where two tiny intelligences ride their host across a dying world, and cold logic leads toward an unexpected end.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Giunta