George O. Smith 54 min read

In a concrete-walled lab, six workers stare at a crystal in the frozen horror of the Gorgon's head, then panic, though they know they can no more outrun its danger than duck a bullet.

George O. Smith's 1950 story is a taut hard-SF space opera. Gripping, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for a tense story built around a deadly, fascinating crystalline menace and the disciplined struggle to contain it, in fast-moving, technically-minded golden-age SF from a reliable engineer-storyteller of the era.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Calle