
Transcriber's Note:
A weather‑worn spaceman named Pop Ganlon ekes out a lonely existence ferrying cargo and the occasional passenger through the asteroid belt. He’s a relic of a forgotten era, his ship The Luck rusting in the back‑water yard of Yakki, where wrecks pile up like discarded dreams. When a desperate patrol officer named John Kane shows up with a gun hot on his hip, Pop is offered a chance to leave the grinding routine of Mars behind and head for the distant outpost of Ley’s Landing.
Kane’s motives are opaque, his stare cold and calculating, and the uneasy alliance quickly turns the cramped cockpit into a pressure chamber of mistrust. As The Luck limps toward the fabled “turnover point,” Pop must balance his fading skill with a growing dread that the mission may cost more than a simple freight run. Listeners will be drawn into a gritty, near‑future frontier where survival hinges on both old‑world grit and the thin line between duty and desperation.
Language
en
Duration
~11 minutes (11K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2010-02-16
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1921–2004
A prolific mid-century storyteller, he brought wartime experience and pulp-magazine energy to science fiction, thrillers, and adventure novels. His work ranges from sharp short fiction to ambitious alternate history like The Burning Mountain.
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