Murray Leinster

The Black Galaxy Murray Leinster

ROD CANTRELL, whose trick of teleportation does considerable world-saving, emerges under the able guidance of author Murray Leinster as the chief figure in THE BLACK GALAXY. His other-world gadget has enabled him to become the pioneer interplanetary explorer of Earth and he is infuriated with a politics-ridden Space Project Committee. He and his secretary, pretty Pat Bowen, visit the Stellaris, first real space-ship, which Cantrell has been designing, before he is kicked upstairs to a desk job he doesn't want. Construction is still going on and, through a worker's accident, the ship, still incomplete and utterly unarmed, is sent flashing into the "other" space, a universe of complete darkness, in which its hyper-drive operates. Cantrell has been removed from his job as chief space-explorer because of his insistence, thanks to a booby-trapped pyramid of strange design he found on Calypso during one of his previous space-flights, that some intelligent species, hostile to all other space-travelers and their worlds, has long been roving the star lanes. At some time, perhaps a few thousand years ago, they have utterly wiped out an advanced Martian civilization and left the planet dead and gutted behind them. The Stellaris and its passengers-hardly a crew in any sense of the word-are virtually a space-derelict and forced to rely upon their wits and ingenuity, as well as Cantrell's brilliant leadership. They are tracked down by the alien race, who travel in immense pyramids and are utterly foreign and vicious to all human concepts. Before the final battle is fought amid the shining stars Cantrell and his little group have traveled through a journey that makes this novel one of the most scientifically ingenious as well as stirring science fiction stories ever to emerge from the Leinster typewriter. A FICTION HOUSE PRESS REPRINT