Alan J. Ramm 21 min read

The salvage vessel Cerebus III leaps sidewise as a calcium faculae comes boiling up like a cannonball, hurling the crew into cursing heaps, for close to the Sun, the salvage business is a deadly one.

Alan J. Ramm's 1954 story is a rousing hard-SF space opera. Vivid, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a fast-moving tale of a spacegoing salvage crew braving the lethal turbulence near the Sun, where quick reflexes and steady nerves mean the difference between salvage and disaster, in a colorful, technically-minded golden-age adventure.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry