Moon Glow

The year is the late 1950s. The moon is still three decades away from human footprints. And in this novella, America is about to win the space race with the Ajax XX, the first American spacecraft to touch lunar soil. Captain Junius Robb commands a crew of pioneers who orbit the moon for a day and a half before making their historic descent. The banter is warm, the camaraderie is genuine, and the wonder of standing on another world radiates from every page. But when rocket expert Hamston ventures out alone and returns gravely ill, the mission takes a sinister turn. Something he brought back as a souvenir from his solo expedition has infected him. The crew's elation curdles into dread as they realize the moon may not be barren after all. This is 1950s space fiction at its most optimistic and most chilling: a window into what an earlier generation imagined touching the stars would feel like, before we knew what waited for us there.