Description

Lieutenant Roger Lane and his crew are in serious trouble. After a mysterious pirate ship appears beside their patrol cruiser, a strange blue ray paralyzes everyone aboard before they can activate their powerful defenses. Cast adrift in an undersized emergency vessel, eight men must endure foul air, failing machinery, and the humiliating knowledge that their prized warship has been stolen without a fight.

Their only hope is Mars, thirty million miles away, but the escape ship’s engine has been sabotaged and its life-support system is struggling. Lane is already imagining the reprimands awaiting him, while Patrolman Reynolds worries about the infuriatingly successful Special-Captain Donald Barclay. With space pirates, futuristic patrol craft, and an arsenal of wildly inventive rays, this lively adventure plays with the grandest traditions of early science fiction—while gleefully exaggerating them. Expect fast-moving peril, colorful technology, and a knowingly comic take on the idea that every impossible problem can be solved with one more miraculous scientific device.