Everett B. Cole 1 hr 13 min read

A caravan master brings grim news: Naran Makun's brother has vanished without a trace, not a scrap of cargo, not a bone, swallowed somewhere on the swirling, treacherous 'null.'

Everett B. Cole's 1958 story is an inventive social-SF space opera. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a well-built tale of a strange spacefaring frontier and its perils, where the disappearance of a seasoned traveler sets off a search that tests who is truly strong and who is the weakling, in solid idea-rich golden-age SF.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 13 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen