Robert E. Gilbert 17 min read

An hour and forty-one minutes before deceleration, a spacecopter materializes alongside the great vessel called the Box, and Jak and the querulous, red-robed Drusilla brace for what comes next.

Robert E. Gilbert's 1955 story is a wry, inventive space-opera adventure. Colorful, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a strange and stylish tale of a far-future spacefaring society, told with vivid detail and dry humor, where a routine voyage turns on an unexpected intruder from the void.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Joseph Eberle