Reuben Merliss 45 min read

Of twenty who tried, only one escaped the planet, simply by walking up to a crowded ticket window and buying passage to Earth, then choosing a seat far from every other passenger.

Reuben Merliss's 1955 story is a tense first-contact and hard-SF tale. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a suspenseful story of a fugitive fleeing among the crowds of returning soldiers, carrying a secret that makes him more dangerous than anyone aboard suspects, in a lean, quietly menacing golden-age thriller.

In its time

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

Reading it

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