Lester del Rey

Young Danny Cross couldn't understand the telegram from the Security Commission ordering him home from college. He wondered whether it had to do with the reported "death" of one of America's leading atomic scientists in a rocket explosion over White Sands. He was surprised to find that it was only another thorough security check and a change of security card - the vital "open sesame" to anyone living in the Alamogordo, New Mexico, of 1981. But Danny noticed a change in the atmosphere at the proving grounds and in the communities where its scientists and technicians lived. As more and more atomic specialists disappeared in "rocket explosions" miles above Earth - explosions that failed to scatter debris under the sites of the accidents - the former camaraderie was replaced by an air of suspicion and foreboding. The disappearance of Danny's cousin, "Jet", an ace rocket pilot, put the worried teen-ager onto a line of reasoning concerning the continuing "explosions" too close to the truth to be ignored: that a highly skilled scientific group had planned, constructed and was operating a space station that circled the Earth IN SECRET! He suspected that even his mother and father planned to desert Earth's laboratories for an extra-terrestrial life. The questions of "where did they go?" and "how did they get there?" as answered here make this a story of mounting suspense and tangled intrigue that few science fiction yarns can match.

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