Randall Garrett 1 hr 21 min read

'I'm quite sure he's one,' the clipped British voice says in David Houston's ear as he fills out a slip in a London bank, 'he's cashing a check for a thousand pounds. Keep him under surveillance.'

Randall Garrett's 1957 story is a taut dystopian and psi-powers tale of surveillance and pursuit. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a tense spy-story of hidden alien agents and the men who hunt them, where telepathy and technology combine in a deadly game across a watchful Earth.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 21 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).