Calling the Empress

When the Empress of Kolain vanishes into the moving geometry of the Solar System, a routine Mars-to-Venus flight becomes a race against time, quarantine, and loss. A deadly epidemic on Venus forces Don Channing, Venus Equilateral's quick-witted communications expert, and engineer Walt Franks to do the impossible: find and contact a ship in deep space before it can be trapped or destroyed, with a million dollars' worth of Martian Line Moss aboard. What follows is a fast, clever battle of beams, mirrors, orbital math, and improvisation. With Arden pressing for answers and Freddy on the far end of the search, Channing and his crew reject impossible solutions, sketch plans on a tablecloth, and build precision hardware on the fly. They turn the station itself into a giant sighting instrument, battling motion, distance, and signal loss with a "shotgun" scanning beam that finally catches a weak return. Blending hard science fiction, suspense, and lively banter, this story celebrates the stubborn ingenuity needed to make contact across millions of miles. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.