TABLE OF CONTENTS
[CHAPTER ONE: Spacebound]
[CHAPTER TWO: Rake That Radiation!]
[CHAPTER THREE: Capture and Drive!]
[CHAPTER FOUR: Find the Needle!]
[CHAPTER FIVE: The Gray World]
[CHAPTER SIX: Rip's Planet]
[CHAPTER SEVEN: Earthbound!]
[CHAPTER EIGHT: Duck—or Die!]
[CHAPTER NINE: Repel Invaders!]
[CHAPTER TEN: Get the Scorpion!]
[CHAPTER ELEVEN: Hard Words]
[CHAPTER TWELVE: Mercury Transit]
[CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Peril!]
[CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Between Two Fires]
[CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Rocketeers]
[CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Ride the Planet!]
[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Visitors!]
[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Courtesy—With Claws]
[CHAPTER NINETEEN: Spacefall]
[CHAPTER TWENTY: On the Platform]
CHAPTER ONE
Spacebound
A thousand miles above Earth's surface the great space platform sped from daylight into darkness. Once every two hours it circled the earth completely, spinning along through space like a mighty wheel of steel and plastic.
Through a telescope on Earth the platform looked to be a lifeless, lonely disk, but within it, hundreds of spacemen and Planeteers went about their work.
In a ready room at the outer edge of the platform, a Planeteer officer faced a dozen slim, black-clad young men who wore the single golden orbits of lieutenants. This was a graduating class, already commissioned, having a final informal get-together.
The officer, who wore the three-orbit insignia of a major, was lean and trim. His short-cropped hair covered his head like a gray fur skull cap. One cheek was marked with the crisp whiteness of an old radiation burn.