Fugitive of the Stars / Land Beyond the Map

Classic Space Opera of Outlawed Space Pilot! Horne, the Vega Queen's pilot, had been warned. "Don't forget the meteor swarm." And Horne's course took the spaceship fifteen thousand miles out of its way to avoid those deadly rocks. But when Horne went off duty, he felt numbed by a curious drug-like leadenness. When he woke, Horne was in a lifeboat, speeding away from the floating wreckage of the Vega Queen. Only eighteen passengers had survived out of one hundred and fifty-three. And each person in the tiny life boat believed Horne responsible for deliberate negligence, calculated destruction. Horne knew someone had drugged him and tampered with the ship to alter its course. But who? And for what cosmic purpose? Horne's search for answers would take him deep into the galactic politics of Edmond Hamilton's Federation period, far across space to a strange world where he would meet strange beings, and to a cosmic weapon that held the key to interstellar peace or war! From the author of The Star Kings and creator of Captain Future.