This World Must Die!

In the twenty-second century, humanity has supposedly evolved beyond violence. But when a deadly plague sweeps across the stars, turning victims violent and insane, civilization faces an impossible calculus: let the infection spread and kill billions, or recruit the only people still capable of killing to stop it. Lou Phillips is a murderer. So are his three fellow prisoners. Together, they've been offered an impossible bargain: board the quarantined ship carrying thousands of infected souls, and execute them all before the plague reaches Earth. Refuse, and humanity burns. Accept, and they become the monsters society needed but would never forgive. Undersecretary Anthony Varret delivers the pitch with bureaucratic calm: you are criminals, you are expendable, and this is your punishment disguised as redemption. Fyfe's 1951 novella crackles with cold war tension and moral horror. What happens when a civilization that's abolished violence suddenly needs it? When the only people qualified to save the human race are its worst offenders? Sharp, uncomfortable, and terrifyingly plausible, this is sci-fi that asks what we truly owe to survival.