Winston K. Marks 54 min read

On paradisal Sirius XXII, the members of Earth's test colony breathe sweet clean air by a forest lake, but their official recorder cannot shake the feeling that something is watching, and waiting.

Winston K. Marks's 1954 story is an atmospheric colonization and first-contact tale. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a well-turned story of settlers on a seemingly perfect new world, and the slow, creeping realization that their idyllic planet may not be as empty, or as welcoming, as it first appears.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas