Randall Garrett 26 min read

'I want you to put me in prison!' the big, hairy man says in a trembling voice to Lt. Phoebe Harris of the Terran Rehabilitation Service, for to escape Mars, Clayton must do the impossible.

Randall Garrett's 1956 story is a taut colonization and psi-powers tale of a desperate man. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a prisoner so loathes the red planet that he'll attempt an impossible escape from a crack-proof camp, and discovers what Mars has already made of him.

In its time

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

Reading it

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