Earth in 2500AD is no place for a young man with a dream of freedom. And Dard Nordis is worse off than most. His brother was killed for covert activities as a Free Scientist in a world where science is outlawed and blamed for all evils. Now Dard and his niece are hunted and trying to find his brother's friends before their enemies find them and execute them as well. The stakes are high—he can be shot down and killed like his brother or escape to the stars in a spaceship that the Free Scientists have built in secret! Here is a powerful novel of the future in which the battle-cry is: THE STARS ARE OURS!

When Raf Kurbi's Terran spaceship burst into unexplored skies of the far planet Astra and was immediately made welcome by the natives of a once-mighty metropolis, Kurbi was unaware of three vital things: One was that Astra already harbored an Earth colony—descended from refugees from the world of the previous century. Two was that these men and women were facing the greatest danger of their existence from a new outburst of the inhuman fiends who had once tyrannized Astra. Three was that the natives who were buying Kurbi's science know-how were those very fiends—and their intentions were implacably deadly for all humans, whether Earth Born or Star Born.