They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
"IT" was the evil spawn of lifeless space, drifting aimlessly until ITs sinister birthing place should come. And finding that abode for life, IT grew, sucking energy from Terra itself—gathering strength for that time when all should flee before ITs malign wrath.
Graed Garroway's empire on Earth was toppling, smashed by the flaming vengeance of Dirk Morris who struck from nowhere with blinding speed and true justice. Yet such a thing could not be—for Dirk Morris was dead, slain at the brutal command of the Black Dictator.
Shadrach: Once, in Bible times, three men were cast into a fiery furnace—and lived! Now, on far-off, frozen Titania, three space-bitten Shadrachs faced the same awful test of godship.<P> The Ballad of Blaster Bill: They recite this epic poem in the spaceways…
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. “Scrawny neck” would mean only one inmate of our void-perambulating asylum. Lancelot Biggs. Genius and crackpot, scarecrow and sage—and soon to become son-in-law of the skipper.