[Gutenberg 50736] • Address: Centauri

"The author has done a good job in making his twisted people real & their problems logical. A good idea, well worked out."--Astounding/Analog.

Medical science has created a world of perfect people. No matter what birth defects or devastating accidents they suffer, science can fix them. No one is deformed or unattractive, except for a handful, who have suffered calamities beyond even the power of future surgery to perfect. They're Accidentals. Exiled on a tiny asteroid between Mars & Jupiter, to the rest of humanity the Accidentals are pathetic, crippled & deformed, half men & women, fractional organisms masquerading as people. To many they're circus freaks, but to themselves they are still members of the human race. Their leader is Dochi, who'd been a electrochemical engineer with a degree in cold lighting. Then he became the victim of a particularly nasty accident, badly mangled & thrown into a vat of basic cold lighting fluid. His arms gone, his ribs crushed into his spinal column, his regeneration hadn't been easy. The semiorganic cold lighting fluid had both preserved him, & in part replaced his blood, permeating every tissue until his body had adapted. The adaptation couldn't be reversed. Now Dochi, his arms & back muscles torn away, must wear prosthetic arms for appearance sake but can't move them, while the metabolism of his ruined body pulses with light like that of the firefly. There's also Nona, deaf, dumb, seemingly unintelligent, yet a genius in her rapport with machines, & Anti, the ballerina who was infected by a Venusian fungi until she became a shapeless thing living in the pool of acid, her body a gross, ceaselessly growing mass of flesh, unceasingly eaten away by acids, least she someday outweigh the world. Plus, Jordan, gone from the waist down, & Jeriann, her digestive tract destroyed. None of the perfect people in the solar system even wants to be reminded of the existence of the Accidentals. So, when the Accidentals learn the 1st interstellar flight is in preparation they decide to hijack the ship & seek a world they can make their own. The stars are very far away & the exploratory trips will be long. But the medical skills which have kept them alive have also given the Accidentals incredible endurance & made them nearly immortal. They know that while there may be no place for them in the worlds of ordinary humanity, their unique metabolisms make them ideal candidates for interstellar exploration. There's only one problem: The perfect people don't want a bunch of freaks as humanity's 1st emissaries to the stars. They're willing to blow the Accidentals' ship out of space to stop them. What Earth can't possibly anticipate is the difference the Accidental's strange talents can make.

"Personalities whose courage you will respect & admire. Definitely worth reading."--Fantastic Universe