Murray Leinster 1 hr 27 min read

A lone Interstellar Medical Service ship drifts in overdrive toward a world with a strange problem, for the Med Service is called only when a case defeats everyone else.

Murray Leinster's 1957 story is a thoughtful military-SF and social-SF tale. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a fine Med Service story in Leinster's beloved series vein, a clever medical-diplomatic puzzle on an alien world, where reason and decency outmatch force, in idea-rich golden-age SF from a genre grandmaster.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 27 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen