
A battered starship has left Kent Knight and his crew stranded on a desolate, rock‑strewn asteroid. Amid the gray landscape he discovers a tiny, furry creature that seems harmless at first—a reminder of Earth’s comforts. Yet the animal’s presence triggers a strange, soothing hum that quickly twists into a painful mental assault, as an unseen intelligence begins to whisper inside his mind.
Confused and wounded, Kent fights to keep his sense of self while the alien presence—calling itself “the Thing”—taunts him, promising answers about why they were brought to this lonely world. The asteroid’s harsh terrain amplifies his physical agony, but the real danger lies in the mind‑games that test his resolve. Listeners are drawn into a tense struggle between human will and an alien will that seeks to dominate, setting the stage for a desperate race for survival.
Language
en
Duration
~46 minutes (44K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2021-01-21
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1917–2000
A versatile American writer who moved easily between science fiction, local history, and memoir, his work ranged from pulp-magazine adventures to warmly personal books about Midwestern life. He also wrote under the name Vaseleos Garson, a byline familiar to readers of mid-20th-century genre fiction.
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