
Chet Barfield awakens on the red‑sun world of Hedlot, chained and mocked by the grotesque Agvar villagers who have kept him captive for years. Stripped of his crisp uniform and the familiar hum of a star‑craft, he must learn to survive on a hostile planet while the distant roar of a rescue ship stirs a fierce longing for vengeance. The story follows his daily battle against hunger, alien cruelty, and the lingering echo of his former life as a highly trained astronaut.
As Chet’s memories of Earth surface—his disciplined training, the pride of his uniform, the promise of a crew—he begins to plot a daring answer to the torment he endures. The narrative weaves tense moments of oppression with flashes of hope, exploring how far a man will go to reclaim his identity and confront the monsters that hold him captive.
Language
en
Duration
~30 minutes (28K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Jun 7, 2010
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1915–2003
A mid-century science fiction writer with a sharp, thoughtful style, he published a compact but memorable run of stories in leading genre magazines of the 1950s. His work is still remembered by SF readers for its intelligence, wit, and classic magazine-era imagination.
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