THE DAEDALUS
MISSION

Once a colony ship has left Earth, it cannot be recalled and it cannot be contacted.  The fate of these vessels and their cargos - designed to be the seeds of new human worlds - remained a tantalizing mystery to those who stayed home.  The mission of the scientific recontact ship "Daedelus" was to go out there and find out what happened.  And, if necessary, help out the colonists should their developing worlds have taken warped paths.

THE FLORIANS is the story of the first flight of the "Daedelus" and the crew of seven.  It launches a new series by the author of the novels of Star-pilot Grainger, space adventures with a difference that have achieved high praise.  On the world of the Florians, they did indeed find a planet in trouble - except that the ingabitants refused to admit it.

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BEFORE IN PAPERBACK

THE DAEDELUS
MISSION:2

The planet called Dendra seemed too good to be true.  One vast forest world, marvelous climate, few dangerous beasts, a balanced hospitable ecology - all should have spelled out a good place for a human colony.

But the original survey team had registered doubts, listed it as borderline without further explanation.  Nevertheless the politicians had okayed it and a colony had been landed there... and a hundred and fifty Earthly years has passed without anyone hearing from it.

Now the recontact vessel Daedelus was coming to check up - and they found the climate as marvelous as before, the forest green and friendly, and the colony as inexplicable disaster.  There was a biological and psychological puzzle that had to be solved for the sake of all human worlds - and for the crew of the Daedelus it was either crack it or crack up.

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THE
DAEDELUS MISSION: 3

The colony was successful. That was evident as soon as the recontact ship Daedalus had landed. It was successful, prosperous, and everything was due to the work and genius of J. Wildeblood, biochemist and planetary leader.

This world now bore the name of its benefactor. And it was truly his empire, with a grateful, hard-working people heeding every wish of his descendants.

But the suspicious scientific minds of the Daedalus's special crew were very uneasy. Was Wildeblood's Empire all it seemed - or was there a structure invisible to the eyewhich spelled out something a lot more blood-curdling?

Once again the talented hand of Brian M. Stableford shapes a world-sized mystery that only solid science could solve.

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THE
DAEDELUS MISSION:4

One of the classical Utopias of philosophy is the City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, which outlined an ideal community based upon a marvellous Arcadian city encompassing seven levels of advanced humanity.

Utopian groups had emigrated into space to found their ideal communities... and it was on such a colony world, called appropriately Arcadia, that the recontact starship Daedelus made its fourth planetfall.  And there, in all its perfect splendor, stood the fulfillment of Campanella's dream, the real seven-circled City of the Sun.

But the city was too literal, the inhabitants too perfect, the world too Arcadian - and very quickly the Daedelus's scientists realized that in this Utopia the idealists had unleashed a phenomenon that could undermine all human culture on all human worlds.

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THE
DAEDELUS MISSION:5

Only the infinite historcal experience of teeming Terra offered a guide to the problems to be faced by the future imitators of Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook.

This was very obvious in the case of the fifth planet-colony to be visited by the recontact ship Daedelus.  For the struggle for food had become bitter and hard and the main human colony had slid back to grim fundamentals.  The Earth parallel lay in the presence across an "impassible" ocean of another continent, another human colony, long isolated and alienated.  The solution was there - the voyage had to rival that of Columbus - and all the clever science brought from far-away Earth would be no substitute for old-fashioned courage and pioneering risk.

Ecology, psychology, and oceanography supply the framework that makes BALANCE OF POWER memorable - and timely.

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THE
DAEDELUS MISSION:6

The setup on the colonized planet Geb seemed ideal for humanity.  Beside its habitable climate, it also possessed a ready-made slave-labor reserve.  There were semi-intelligent natives, humanoid, unaggresive, willing to work.  And so the colony thrived....

By the time that the recontact ship Daedelus arrived with its trained Earth scientists, things had become less simple.  The enigma of the native Sets jarred with the types of life on Geb.  It had become obvious that the Sets with their slave programming must have originated elsewhere - might even be an android creation.

And that left the Daedelus with the gretest and most important problem of their whole cruise.  Who were the originators of these Sets?  Did Earth have a competitor Out There?

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