
A weary miner named Shano steps onto the hulking liner Stardust, his body frail and his mind set on a final journey home. The spaceport is bathed in infrared, the air buzzing with a red warning that signals an unseen danger lurking beyond the lanes. As the ship claws its way into the vacuum, a gruff Jupiterian captain informs him of a hostile Uranian fleet prowling the sector, turning what should be a routine boarding into a tense gamble.
With cracked goggles and a ticket clutched tightly, Shano must navigate a cramped crew, a cryptic lieutenant, and the looming threat of an interplanetary war. The story blends hard‑boiled spacefaring grit with a poignant portrait of a man confronting his own mortality. Listeners are drawn into a claustrophobic, neon‑lit vessel where every moment teeters between routine procedure and sudden peril, setting the stage for a suspenseful, character‑driven sci‑fi adventure.
Language
en
Duration
~21 minutes (20K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2020-11-23
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
A mid-century pulp storyteller with a taste for danger, space travel, and high-stakes adventure, this author is best known today through a small group of science-fiction tales preserved online. His work appeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when magazine fiction thrived on bold ideas and fast-moving plots.
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