Milk Run: First Contact in Hyperspace

A routine voyage through hyperspace becomes anything but routine when three alien beings awaken aboard the Star Rover. They are remnants of a civilization that vanished a million years ago, and their first encounter with humanity does not go well. To the crew, the skags are hideous monsters. To the skags, humans are equally repulsive. Neither side understands the other, and fear quickly gives way to a struggle for control of the ship.

Second Officer Charlie Guhn prepares to fight back while astrogator Mark Caldwell faces the far stranger challenge of communicating with an intelligence that has no reason to trust him. Then there is Captain Jock Warren. The hard-drinking old spaceman has his own peculiar way of dealing with an alien takeover, and it may prove more effective than anyone expects. Milk Run mixes hyperspace adventure, first contact, strange science and broad humor into a fast-moving tale where humanity’s greatest diplomatic asset might be hiding in the captain’s cabin.

Robert Donald Locke published Milk Run in the May 1953 issue of Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy. His other science fiction included Deepfreeze, which appeared in Imagination in January 1953; G-r-r-r…!, published in Fantastic Universe in January 1957; and Next Door, Next World, which appeared in Analog in April 1961. Locke also wrote under the name Roger Arcot.

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Lydbog: 14. oktober 2026