Roger D. Aycock 18 min read

Only two alien Alcorians have been on Earth a month, yet they're already driving a wedge that could destroy the Weal overnight, and David Locke knows their seeming generosity hides an angle.

Roger D. Aycock's (Roger Dee's) 1952 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a tense story of alien visitors whose gifts to humanity carry hidden costs, and the men who scheme both to exploit and to resist them, in a well-turned golden-age piece about the true price of an alien bargain.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

18 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller