Ray Cummings 56 min read

Hailed as a modern Columbus for reaching the little planet Vulcan, the narrator insists he deserves no such applause, he simply did his job, and now sets down the bald facts of an amazing voyage.

Ray Cummings's 1943 story is a rousing space-opera adventure of a voyage to a hidden planet. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful pulp yarn where an expedition to the fabled inner world of Vulcan meets the deadly flame-breathers, told with the plain-spoken vigor of a founding pulp master.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Frank R. Paul