James E. Gunn 34 min read

A crude, bullet-shaped homemade flivver, slapped together from sheet metal and sold for $15,730, descends toward a green planet and stops dead an instant before impact, just like that.

James E. Gunn's 1956 story (part of 'Station in Space') is a clever first-contact and space-opera tale. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a family's do-it-yourself spaceship lands on an alien world and meets a small, canny beggar who can name his own terms, if only anyone could learn what they are.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman