Destiny's Orbit

Ace Double F-161, printed with "Times Without Number"

Though Ajax Calkins was wealthy enough to buy anything on earth his heart desired, the one thing he wanted most was strictly forbidden. That was a world of his own - a planet, however small, which would be his private kingdom in the sky. The Earth-Mars Space Administration stood in his path. They would tolerate no such 18th Century derring-do in the commercial and workaday planetary channels of the 21st Century. Empire-building was out.

But when an offer from a bearded stranger opened the way to just such an adventure, Ajax leapt at the chance. In his luxury spacecraft Destiny he shot out through the inner planets to the tiny world that waited a king - and, unwittingly to a monster outer-planet empire that waited a detonator for cosmic war.