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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Dave Pitman was at rock bottom in emotional stasis. After a gruelling mission, that left his ship in a heap of charred ash, he took the co-pilot slot in the I.G.O. frigate Diomed to fill time that no longer meant anything to him. He was on search and destroy mission--mopping up the remnants of the broken and dispersed O.G.A. armada. On the remote planet of Pactolus, with its frail delicate people and their fantastic turban cult, he began to recharge his psychic batteries and experience a resurge of optimism. But then there was still the question of the two missing O.G.A. ships--one of which was Scotian, and Scotians don't like being cornered.

eBook Publisher: Golden Apple, Wallasey, Published: UK, 1968
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2004

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [195 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [200 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [162 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [924 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [185 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [287 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [212 KB] , hiebook (KML) [399 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [233 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [151 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [188 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [227 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [244 KB]
Words: 54777
Reading time: 156-219 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Pick up a local headman and talk to him. Or, better still, bring him back and let me talk to him," Mowat had said, as though there was nothing to it. But it was not working out like that on the ground.

Four men in a scout car, which just failed to clear the towering sequoia-type vegetation, had spent two days and nights away from the ship, making every effort to do just that. Driven down below the foliage line, weaving in and out of an endless maze of grey, vegetable pillars, it was a rat's eye view of an empty furniture store. Now Pitman, co-pilot of the frigate Diomed, was facing the decision of whether or not to head back.

Returning to Mowat with a mission so blankly unfulfilled was unpalatable enough. Taking it further was doing nobody any good. In fact, it was moving out beyond reason.

Communication on the planet Pactolus had proved unpredictable. As peculiar a set of variants as Dave Pitman had ever met, combined to louse up every reading on their electronic course-keeping gear. He was making so many allowances, they were cancelling each other out; filling every pad with a mass of contradictory calculation.

First casualty, was the link with Diomed itself. Only a fantastic flair for navigational detail had enabled Pitman to keep tabs on where they were and he knew that he was coming to the end of the thread. To get lost and have Diomed taken up to do an orbital search for them would be the final humiliation.

It would also make a small holiday in the heart for Commander Alec Mowat. As a regular officer in the Inter-Galactic Organisation's peace-keeping force, he regarded his second-in-command, Commander Dave Pitman, as an amateur who had come up too fast. It rankled with him that Pitman had already had independent command in corvettes and he was ready to find any reason to support his thesis that such a man was not suitable as his number one in Diomed.

Mowat was a small, dapper man. Dark, living on his nerves, but meticulous in every detail of administration. He was the direct antithesis of Pitman, who was loose-limbed and relaxed and could give the impression of easy-going incompetence.

Pitman himself had not complained about this use of his last two months of compulsory service with I.G.O. As a corvette commander, his distinguished record was on the books. At the end of a searing mission which had left his corvette a mound of blackened ash on Chrysaor, he had been grounded on the great, wandering, artificial asteroid which housed the headquarters of the galaxy's cohesive, political force. Diomed had been commissioned, the latest and most efficient ship in the service and he had asked for a berth in her.

He could have ridden out the last months in recuperative semi-leave to re-orientate himself and regain some measure of optimism. Then he would get back to his interrupted career with the European Space Corporation. But he had already tired of it and wanted action to turn his mind from introspective thought. Emotional stasis was at rock bottom. He did not greatly care whether Diomed succeeded or turned into molecular scrap. Given his basic character pattern, this reinforced the attitudes which were most likely to get across his captain.

Co-pilot appointment on such a ship was reasonable equivalent to command of a corvette and he had not given that aspect a thought. But, in Mowat, he had drawn a commander whose brooding mind fed itself on such detail.