The Eyes Have It

On colonised Mars, paranoia wears a dinner jacket. Joseph Heidel, President of the Superior Council, has spent years selecting and screening his five closest colleagues, trusted allies in ruling the red planet. But lately, whispers of Martian infiltrators have burrowed into his mind. One of them, he becomes certain, is not what he appears. So Heidel schemes aelegant, ruthless trap: a preserving solution added to wine that will make a Martian's distinctive glowing eyes visible in darkness, followed by a dinner where he'll extinguish the candles one by one and expose the imposter. The tension builds with each darkened moment, each face flickering in candlelight, as Heidel grows more convinced of his own cleverness. But the twist arrives like a blade between the ribs, all five of his companions are Martians. The hunter has been the hunted all along, and the man who came to colonise a world discovers he is the outsider now, surrounded by those he sought to unmask. This is 1950s paranoid science fiction at its finest, a Cold War allegory that slides from cunning thriller to existential horror in its final, devastating pages.