The silver airship quickly pierced the hot, hot air. The midday sun illuminated him and the deserted world below. All about the solemn silence of death. Not a single living creature appeared either in the air or on the gray-gray earth. Only the plane itself showed some signs of life. The sky, blue as indigo, did not hide a shadow of a cloud, and on the horizon the mountains crashed into it like the teeth of a giant saw....
Stellar exploration—and depredation—in the exciting first novel in the Solar Queen series from a “superb storyteller” (The New York Times). In the future, venturing out into the stars is more than a way for humanity to chart the cosmos—it’s big business. Every time a new planet is discovered, the highest bidder gets first dibs with exclusive property rights for a year. Anything they can find, they can keep. The planet Limbo was considered a waste of rock to most, which is the only reason apprentice cargo master Dane Thorson and the rest of the crew of the Solar Queen could afford to bid...
It was getting so a person couldn’t sleep nights anymore. Would you like to see all hell break loose? Just make a few holes in nothing at all—push some steel beams through the holes—and then head for the hills. But first, read what happened to some people who really did it....
"Afternoon, Mr. Correy. Anything of interest to report?" "Not a thing, sir!" growled my fire-eating first officer. "I'm about ready to quit the Service and get a job on one of the passenger liners, just on the off chance that something exciting might eventually happen." "You were born a few centuries too late," I chuckled. Correy loved a fight more than any man I ever knew. "The Universe has become pretty well quieted down."...
Three people on board a space cargo ship. Their cargo is the supercomputer ordered by the Martian colony. And then the accident ... And now their ship at great speed flies away from the solar system. And if the human brain is not able to solve the problem of returning home, what way out of the situation do they have left? .....
Sime Hemingway slept badly on her first night on Mars. There was no real reason why he should not. His bed was soft. He dined excellently, because the cuisine of this hotel offered not only Martian delicacies, but also painted on Earth and on Venus. However, Sime did not sleep well....
The earth was so far away that it was not visible. Even the sun was just a flicker. But this vast distance did not mean that isolation could last forever. Instruments inside the ship intercepted radio broadcasts and, within an hour, early television signals. Machines compiled dictionaries and grammars and began to translate the main languages. The history of the planet has been tabulated as facts become available....
