Les Cole 29 min read

An ultimate disaster races toward Earth at light-speed, and only a massive sacrifice can save mankind, as Fred Kirr looks into the fanatical, fervent eyes of the girl JoAnn and feels his scalp crawl.

Les Cole's 1960 story is a rousing post-apocalyptic space opera. Vivid, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful tale of cosmic catastrophe and desperate sacrifice, where humanity's last hope turns on faith, fanaticism, and a fateful voyage, in a fast-moving golden-age piece pitched at the grand scale of world-saving heroics.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay