Jim Harmon 35 min read

Tension eases as the spaceship settles safely down, and Ekstrohm is relieved: an exploration camp will make it easier to hide, at night, the secret problem he cannot let the others discover.

Jim Harmon's 1959 story is a taut colonization and first-contact tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a survey crew on a strange new world confronts natives that seem to die and rise again, and one man's private torment mirrors the planet's own unsettling refusal of finality.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Wallace Wood