Stanley Mullen 52 min read

'But a convict,' Kial Nasron protests, yet Hailard of Venusian Exports insists: convict or not, Craig Alston is the man for the job, for a man without deviltry has little capacity for wisdom.

Stanley Mullen's 1951 story is a colorful space-opera adventure of a dangerous Venusian assignment. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing tale where a hardened convict is chosen for a perilous mission into the mysterious pit of Nympthons, on a Venus still full of eerie secrets after two centuries.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal