Cleve Cartmill's "Some Day We'll Find You" (novelette, free)

Spacetrades, Ltd originally invented space propulsion, & has deep contacts among the politicians, hence continues to be a monopoly controlling space travel among human colonies in Sol.

Now a broke engineer with no capital has invented an alternate & cheaper method of spaceship propulsion, & colonies see a way of ending the monopoly of Spacetrades. As does an enemy of Spacetrades on earth, hoping to replace Spacetrades monopoly with his own.

So three parties want the engineer & want to fund his venture - colonies to break the monopoly, Spacetrades to preserve the monopoly, & Spacetrades' enemy to establish another monopoly. Engineer wants to go with colonies, but a bunch of toughs are out to grab him...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Cleve Cartmill.