
Dr. Little awakens in a stark, copper‑lined chamber that feels both like a ceiling and a floor, his body encased in a strange, dust‑laden sleeping bag. Disoriented by the weightless environment and the unfamiliar orange glow of slender tubes, he quickly discovers a single hatch leading to an unknown corridor. As he pieces together clues—a mysterious identification tag, the faint scent of vacuum‑exposed fabric, and the sensation of being trapped in a six‑sided cell—he realizes he’s no longer aboard his familiar starship.
The captors of this enigmatic prison have an odd rule: prisoners are encouraged to devise their own escape devices, only to have those plans mysteriously thwarted at the last moment. Little’s scientific mind races to understand the physics of the room, the purpose of the cage‑like architecture, and the motives behind the captors’ perverse game. Listeners are drawn into a tense, cerebral puzzle where survival hinges on unraveling the hidden logic of an alien environment.
Language
en
Duration
~2 hours (134K 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
2020-03-05
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1922–2003
Best known for making science feel adventurous, this classic hard-SF writer built stories around real physics, alien worlds, and the joy of figuring things out. He also brought an unusual mix of scientific rigor and classroom clarity to everything he wrote.
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