W. J. Matthews 42 min read

Geoffrey Thorne is 'on the beach', face down in it, in fact, drowning in a drunken stupor in the brackish shallows of the Martian polar cap, until swift, vital hands snatch him up.

W. J. Matthews's 1946 story is an atmospheric horror-tinged space opera of a drifting hulk. Vivid, moody golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing tale where a broken-down spaceman, hauled from the gutter, is drawn into the sinister mystery of a derelict adrift in the void.

In its time

Published in 1946, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Murphy Anderson