James H. Schmitz 34 min read

Uncle William Boles' war-battered alien Geest gun hangs among his oddities, a relic of an interstellar war, and a clue that the long-ago enemy may not be so long gone after all.

James H. Schmitz's 1961 story is a taut first-contact and social-SF tale. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a well-built story where an old war-trophy and a boy's curiosity uncover a hidden alien menace on a frontier colony world, blending suspense and a hard-won vigilance, in a well-turned golden-age piece from a reliably ingenious adventure master.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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