D. L. James 29 min read

Waiting for a boat home at a Persian Gulf railhead, a construction man falls in with a ruin-digging archaeologist bound for the northern desert, and a doorway to somewhere far stranger than Iraq.

D. L. James's 1940 story is a rousing adventure and time-travel tale. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful yarn where a chance meeting at the edge of the desert leads two men toward ancient ruins and a passage out of their own time, in the exotic, wonder-tinged adventure style of the classic pulps.

In its time

Published in 1940, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

J. Kelly