Randall Garrett 1 hr 32 min read

The two gray, windowless rooms aren't luxurious, but Sebastian MacMaine hadn't expected they would be, a prisoner in the insignialess uniform of a Kerothi officer, having done the unthinkable.

Randall Garrett's 1961 story is a sharp, provocative military and social-SF tale. Clever, thought-provoking golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a brilliant officer commits the highest treason imaginable, and forces the reader to weigh whether betraying one's own side might, in some cases, be the truest form of loyalty.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 32 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).