Gods of Space

The year is far enough ahead that polio still devastates Earth. Young astronaut Roy Atwood volunteers for a desperate mission: travel to the remote Planetoid-150 and retrieve xarite, a substance that might hold the key to curing the plague. The journey itself is perilous enough, but when Atwood lands on the mysterious planet, he discovers something far stranger than empty space. The asteroid harbors intelligent life, ancient and alien, and they do not welcome human visitors. What begins as a straightforward retrieval becomes a tense encounter between human ambition and incomprehensible otherness. Cummings writes with the breathless optimism of an era that believed science would solve everything, yet his tale carries an undercurrent of unease: what happens when we reach for the stars and find something looking back?