Slay-Ride by Winston Marks Episode #96

Winston Marks | September 6, 2023

Slay-Ride by Winston Marks Episode #96
Winston Marks

SLAY–RIDE

Episode #96 · Written by Winston marks · Narrated by Scott Miller

A ruthless stowaway-turned-pirate sets a deadly plan in motion aboard a lonely freighter, confident he can outwit an entire crew and claim a fortune. But as the cold vastness of space closes in, he discovers too late that the cosmos has its own brutal way of settling scores.

Slay-Ride begins at full throttle: Frane Lewis, a hired killer with an appetite for violence, systematically wipes out the crew of a small freighter as part of a secret piracy job. It’s all supposed to be quick, simple, and ruthlessly efficient — clear the ship, vent the air, wait in a space suit until his criminal partners board. But the moment he dons unfamiliar spaceman gear and seals himself inside the control room, the flaws in his perfect crime begin to surface. The cold vacuum outside is predictable; the terrifying rise of heat inside his own suit is not.

As hours drag into a fever-soaked ordeal, Frane battles hallucinations, dehydration, and the suffocating realization that his employers may have set him up for a one-way trip. The story transforms from stark crime-in-space to a gripping tale of survival, as every breath becomes a risk and every second of rising temperature threatens to push him beyond sanity. Slay-Ride is a tense, atmospheric descent into isolation, fear, and the merciless physics of space.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winston K. Marks carved out a unique niche in the golden age of science fiction with stories that blended action, psychology, and sharp-edged irony. Born in 1915, Marks broke into the field during a period when magazines were hungry for bold new voices. He delivered — publishing dozens of stories across Planet Stories, If, Fantastic Universe, Science Fiction Quarterly, and other genre staples. His works were known for brisk pacing, clever twists, and a talent for grounding speculative settings with very human motives.

Marks frequently explored the darker corners of ambition, greed, and the survival instinct, often placing flawed characters into situations where technology, space, or sheer circumstance exposed their vulnerabilities. He understood how to make cosmic environments terrifying not by exaggerating them, but by showing how small and fragile humans truly are. Though he never achieved the widespread name recognition of some contemporaries, Winston K. Marks remains a treasured voice in classic science fiction — and Slay-Ride is one of his finest examples of tight, high-tension storytelling.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Slay-Ride by Winston Marks — a tense vintage sci-fi tale of space piracy, danger, and survival as a ruthless killer learns the hard limits of the void.