The Solar Queen

An omnibus edition of Andre Norton's first two stories about the Sola Queen and, particularly, Dane Thorson, as the ship and its crew try to survive as a Free Traders in a Universe coming ever more under the control of the big interstellar trading houses. In the first of these tales, 'Sargasso of Space', Dane finds himself assigned to the Free Trade vessel Solar Queen rather than a ship belonging to one of the transtellar shipping lines. Not sure about his luck in joining this crew, Dane soon finds a new family amongst the crew, especially the two other apprentices in the crew. When a Scout cruiser has to auction off a number of new trade routes, the Queen's crew throw in their pay in order to bid on the forbiddingly named Limbo. When they go to this planet to see what they have bought the rights to, they find a world suffering from aw Burn Off, an ancient war that had reduced most of the planet to slag. As they continue their explorations, though, they find that melted rock is not all the ancients had left behind.

In 'Plague Ship' the Queen's crew had managed to upgrade their route to the planet of Sargol where rare and eagerly sought after gems can be traded for from the felinoid natives but the previous owner of the trade rights had died and not left any notes on what the natives wanted in exchange. It's Dane, breaking trade protocol, who also breaks this impasse even at the risk of endangering the natives. But as the ship made its return voyage to Terra, a greater danger is revealed as something strikes down the crew one by one...

These stories were originally written in the fifties and the attitudes of that decade do show through, but the story telling itself has a sense of wonder that much modern science fiction has lost ( )