Explore "The Ghost Planet" by Murray Leinster on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Tom did. Not by any sudden inspiration, but forced to it by a dodged hanging-on and the sheer necessity put upon him by the ships of the ghost planet. The _Weddington_ continued to climb, no longer rapidly but as the alternative to descent. There was no such storage of fuel in her tanks as would make a journey to the Ghost Planet feasible unless she spent long weeks coasting with no expenditure of power.
And that was not practical. Long before an economy-voyage could be achieved guided missiles from Earth would have made any possible negotiations impossible. The guided missiles would be converted survey-ships and reserve supply craft used to keep the observations on Luna and Mars and Mercury provisioned.