Randall Garrett 34 min read

Retired colonel Lord Barrick Sorban, who looks nothing like a man of action, sips his drink and reads the news in a hotel lobby, a quiet man about to prove anything but unnecessary.

Randall Garrett's 1958 story is a wry social-SF space opera. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale of political intrigue in an interstellar empire, where an unassuming retired officer proves the sharpest man in the room, in a witty, well-turned piece from a master of golden-age adventure.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Martinez