By Ken Everett
A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention....
First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets....
The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System....
These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Drake, Ford, and Barrett. Their adventures are a classic of science-fiction.
The famous scientific trio of Drake, Ford, and Barrett, challenged by the most ruthless aliens in all the universes, blasted off on an intergalactic search for defenses against the invaders of Earth and all her allies.
World after world was visited, secret after secret unleashed, and turned to mighty weapons of intense force—and still the Thessian enemy seemed to grow in power and ferocity.
Mighty battles between huge space armadas were but skirmishes in the galactic war, as the invincible aliens savagely advanced and the Earth team hurled bolt after bolt of pure ravening energy—until it appeared that the universe itself might end in one final flare of furious torrential power....
As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between galaxies, Drake, Ford, and Barrett and Fuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island universe. Ford worked a moment with his slide rule, then said, "We made good time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! Yet you had it on at only half power...."
Drake pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The ship filled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the air of the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through the darkness of intergalactic space.
But suddenly, far off to their left and far to their right, they saw two shining ships paralleling their course! They held grimly to the course of the Earth ship, bracketing it like an official guard.
The Earth scientists stared at them in wonder. "Lord," muttered Drake, "where can they have come from?"