
A lone alien pilot drifts through the void after a violent encounter with a strange solar plasma. His sleek, silver‑pink vessel is badly crippled, its power plants flickering and its instruments nearly dead. With limited supplies and a painful past weighing on him, he must decide whether to risk a perilous landing on a nearby world that shows signs of intelligence.
The planet below teems with unfamiliar life, hinting at the possibility of assistance—but the alien knows that ordinary help won’t be enough. He seeks a being of extraordinary ability, a “superman” who might repair his ship and secure his survival. As the sun’s glare grows brighter and his options narrow, the desperate quest for such a savior becomes the only hope against the cold darkness of space.
Language
en
Duration
~2 hours (154K 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
2009-12-23
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1927–1987
A lively, versatile voice in mid-20th-century science fiction and fantasy, he wrote everything from space adventure to clever mystery-fantasy crossovers. He is especially remembered for the Lord Darcy stories, which blend detective fiction with an alternate world shaped by magic.
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