Kris Neville 40 min read

On the lowest deck below the giant atomic motors, in the glow of a single bulb, a young man calls almost pleadingly for the girl Marte, who waits, half in shadow, in the silent depths of the ship.

Kris Neville's 1950 story is a poignant colonization space opera. Tender, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly moving story of love and longing in the depths of a starship, where two young people find each other in the ship's silent lower levels, in a well-turned golden-age piece with a gentle, wistful heart and a fine sense of mood.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry