Space Station 1

Name: Space Station 1
Author: Frank Belknap Long

Space Station 1, by Frank Belknap Long, follows Lieutenant David Corriston, a newly assigned inspection officer, as he crosses paths aboard a shuttle ship with a beautiful young passenger who turns out to be Helen Ramsey, incognito daughter of Stephen Ramsey, the man who has cornered Mars's uranium claims by freezing out the original colonists. During a shipboard toast, Helen's blustering bodyguard Jim Clakey (really named Henry Ewers) is murdered with a poisoned Martian barb, and Helen vanishes from the ladies' lounge. Searching the ship, Corriston is attacked in a dark cargo hold by a knife-wielding killer who nearly kills him before fleeing. When Captain Sanders finds no "Miss Ramsey" on the passenger list, Corriston is judged a space-shock case and confined to a psychiatric ward on the newly arrived Space Station. Escaping his cell, Corriston survives another poisoned-barb attack, knocks out a Security Guard, and hides in the Master Sequence Selector compartment, where he hears Helen's voice and rescues her from an unseen assailant who has torn a bizarre plastic "mask" partly off her face. He carries her to Commander Clement, but when Clement investigates, he denies any evidence was found and has Corriston locked up as delusional, even hinting he might be encouraged to suicide. Suspicious, Corriston overpowers his guard again and discovers the guard's face is also a mask concealing intricate hook-and-plastic prosthetics — revealing that the entire Station command, including "Clement," consists of impostors installed by Ramsey to smuggle unauthorized uranium shipments to Earth, a scheme exposed when a freighter carrying unstable isotopes goes out of control and explodes on Earth near the Canadian border. Confronting the false Clement, Corriston overhears the impostor officers panicking as a U.S. naval cruiser under Admiral Hayes approaches to retake the Station. He strikes a bargain: safe passage to see Helen and travel with her to Mars in exchange for testifying in the impostors' defense. The Station survives a bombardment from the cruiser, and Corriston and Helen board the just-arrived Mars ship — only to be ambushed at gunpoint by Richard Henley, a colonist leader who has been orchestrating the plot alongside his accomplices Stone and Saddler, using bribed officer Stockton (since killed) to smuggle Helen off the ship and hold her for ransom against her father. Henley forces Corriston, as a trained navigator, to pilot the ship to Mars under threat of death, keeping him locked in the chart room for the fourteen-day voyage while revealing details of the conspiracy: Ramsey's own officers were replaced and masked, real Commander Clement and others imprisoned somewhere on the Station, and Henley plans to extract a huge ransom from Ramsey using Corriston as a credible witness to back the threat. After landing in the Martian desert, Corriston is knocked out and bound, but talks his way past accomplice Stone by exposing Stone's small cut of the ransom compared to Henley's, then overpowers him with his own handcuffs and learns Helen is guarded under threat of death by accomplice Jim Saddler. Rather than attempt a hopeless rescue alone, Corriston treks eighty-seven miles across the freezing Martian desert on foot to reach the mining colony, where—despite near collapse from exhaustion and thin air—he persuades the embittered colonists that Henley has betrayed their cause for his own profit. Nine-tenths of the colonists rally behind him, including Dr. Drever and his stowaway son Freddy, and a two-hundred-plus-man tractor convoy sets out across the desert toward the ship to rescue Helen Ramsey. The convoy endures a violent sandstorm and, nearing the ship, encounters a colonist crawling and collapsing after being attacked by lamprenes—venomous, worm-like native predators whose sting is described as nearly always fatal—and Corriston orders men to attempt a rescue as the text breaks off.

By Frank Belknap Long · First published 1957 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller · 22 chapters · 69,055 words

First lines

INTRIGUE IN EARTH'S OUTER ORBIT

Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors.

What this Textopian page supports

Space Station 1 is listed on Textopian as a novel by Frank Belknap Long, dated 1957 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Date: 1957 CE
Language: English
Genres: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller, Drama, Mystery
Length: 69,055 words
Structure: 22 chapters, 1,158 paragraphs
Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)

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Discussion starters

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Similar titles

Genres

Science Fiction — The book is set in a futuristic space station and explores advanced technology and space travel.
Adventure — The plot involves high-stakes missions and exploration in space.
Thriller — The narrative includes suspenseful and tense situations.
Drama — The story delves into interpersonal conflicts and emotional struggles of the characters.