Michael Shaara 22 min read

High above the Earth, a manned battle station orbits like a coiled spring in the cold of space, the opening move in a taut Cold War duel that could tip the world into ruin.

Michael Shaara's 1954 story is a tense military-SF and social-SF tale. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for an early story by the future author of The Killer Angels, a gripping study of nerve and strategy in an orbital standoff, where the oldest logic of the sling and the stone still holds.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry