Astounding Science Fiction February & March 1954 'Sucker Bait'

Handling wear with rubbed lower spines; The March issue has a fold vertically on the cover and the wraps are supported by tape on the inside spine. 'Sucker Bait' by Isaac Asimov. [Complete in two parts.] Also 'Immigration' by Clifford Simak. Background Information: Asimov was approached in 1953 by the editor Fletcher Pratt, of Twayne Press, with a story proposal: a scientist would create a world, and then Asimov, Poul Anderson, and Virginia Kidd (although Anderson stated that the third writer was Kidd's husband, James Blish) would write novellas set in that world. The three novellas would then be published as a book, together with an essay by the scientist who created the planet. This formula, which Pratt called a Twayne Triplet, had already resulted in the book The Petrified Planet in 1952. The scenario created was that of a binary star system in the globular cluster, Messier 13, with an Earthlike planet called Troas located at one of the system's Lagrangian points. An earlier expedition to Troas for colonization had suffered some mysterious disaster, and a second expedition is being sent to find out if it was suitable for colonization, and to find out what happened to the first expedition. Asimov finished his short story, and then Anderson finished a story called Question and Answer, but Kidd (or James Blish) never completed the third story. The proposed book was never printed. Asimov anticipated that just such a thing might happen, and he arranged that he held the first serial rights for his story. He sold Sucker Bait to Astounding Magazine, where it appeared just a few months before Question and Answer. [WIKI] Ref: Miller 14,F.…