
Alien
A hard‑boiled lieutenant finds himself on a chaotic night in a Boston bar when a brawler storms the place, his head covered in a full plume of feathers instead of hair. The crowd erupts in laughter, the man snaps, and a whirlwind of smashed glass, tossed patrons, and spilled whiskey leaves the police precinct scrambling for answers. The lieutenant, accompanied by a skeptical doctor, is tasked with proving whether the feathers are a bizarre stunt or something far stranger.
The investigation pushes them into a maze of street witnesses, a curious sample of feather‑studded skin, and a city that seems to be hiding a secret beneath its gritty façade. As the duo pieces together clues, the story balances noir humor with a creeping sense of the unknown, hinting that the feathered figure may be more than just a rowdy local. Listeners will be drawn into a witty, tense first act that asks: how far will the law go when the case is truly out of this world?
Language
en
Duration
~22 minutes (21K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Street & Smith Publications, Incorporated,1946.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
May 29, 2022
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1911–1981
A pioneering Golden Age science fiction writer, George O. Smith combined an electronics engineer’s knowledge with stories about communication, invention, and life in space. He is best remembered for the inventive Venus Equilateral series, which began with his 1942 debut in Astounding Science-Fiction.
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