Frank Quattrocchi 22 min read

On vacation by a moonlit island, Intersolar Spaceport man George Harrison is annoyed to be recalled by an emergency, orders from upstairs he can't refuse, in the shadow of a coming alien threat.

Frank Quattrocchi's 1953 story is a tense first-contact and military-SF tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story of humanity's first reckoning with a superior alien power, and the hard question of how a peaceful world answers a menace it may not be able to fight, told with cool golden-age craft.

In its time

Published in 1953, 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

Tom Beecham