REDLINE THE STARS

Norton's four-book series about the trader spaceship Solar Queen ended in 1969 with Postmarked the Stars; this long-range continuation utilizes Norton's concepts and was written mostly by Griffin. This time, the Solar Queen (its personnel often recognizable from 1969) takes aboard a female crew member, the half-alien, empathic, multitalented medic Rael Cofort. Though problems crop up almost at once, and some of the men mutter about her being a jinx, Rael soon saves Sinbad, the ship's cat, after he gets torn up in a terrible battle with a giant rat. Later, on planet Canuche, Rael unmasks a nasty conspiracy among local bar owners, who rob and murder unsuspecting patrons and keep rats to dispose of the evidence. Next, Rael demonstrates her impressive trading abilities in earning the ship a fortune in rare textiles and gems. Finally, she warns the local ocean-shipping magnates of a potential disaster involving the handling of chemical cargoes— and then, sure enough, a shipboard fire triggers a devastating explosion, after which Rael, heedless of her own injuries, shows off her miraculous doctoring skills. Agreeable, well-crafted adventures—the superman slant isn't as tiresome as it sounds in summary—though lacking the salty-dog realism of A. Bertram Chandler's Rim World yarns, and markedly less powerful than C.J. Cherryh's alien-trader Chanur tales.