Robert Silverberg 21 min read

Answering an SOS on an alien world in the Deneb system, spaceman Dave Carter is jumped from behind, and stunned to find he's fighting a fellow Earthman from the missing Vanguard expedition.

Robert Silverberg's 1957 story is a rousing space-opera mystery. Sharp, fast-moving golden-age SF. Read it for an early Silverberg adventure where a rescue call turns into a trap and a puzzle, as a lone spaceman must unravel what became of a lost expedition, in a brisk, engaging golden-age tale of menace on a far world.

In its time

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

Reading it

21 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Llewellyn