Leigh Brackett 33 min read

Tex stirs uneasily on the fort parapet, greasy Jovian fog running down his lips, cursing the adventure-thirst that lured him from the hot dry air of Texas to this dripping outpost, an hour overdue.

Leigh Brackett's 1941 story is a rousing, atmospheric space-opera adventure on a mist-shrouded Jupiter. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for early Brackett, a Texan soldier of fortune and his Martian comrade caught up in war and intrigue on a fog-bound world, ruled by the sinister Dragon-Queen.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Don Lynch