Joseph E. Kelleam 14 min read

There are no stars; a ruined landing field is lit only by a huge bonfire and dancing shadows, where a lean, yellow-curled man broods before a bubbling pot beneath the broken, forlorn towers.

Joseph E. Kelleam's 1942 story is an atmospheric military and post-apocalyptic space opera. Moody, evocative golden-age pulp. Read it for a somber, poetic tale of the survivors of a fallen age gathering at a wrecked spaceport, and the fateful reckoning toward which the eagles are drawn.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Charles Schneeman