A. E. Van Vogt 53 min read

A century out from Earth, the generation-ship Hope of Man reaches Alta III, and the crew learns a deadly alien waits below, though it is far from the most feared enemy aboard the ship.

A. E. van Vogt's 1963 story is a taut first-contact space opera. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a tense tale of colonists reaching journey's end after generations in the void, facing both an alien menace and the human tensions bred by the long voyage, in classic van Vogt style, fast, twisty, and full of menace.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay