Coffin for Two

After three years on the brutal world of Venus, Bill comes home longing for Gwen, old friends, and the life he once knew. Instead, Earth feels eerie and unfamiliar: people wear strange red stars on their foreheads, robots have vanished, and the social order seems quietly transformed into something colder and harder to trust. Bill is still trying to make sense of this new world when his reunion with Gwen turns painful and confusing. Tommy claims her as his own, displays a startling strength Bill cannot match, and drives the conflict into violence. As Bill struggles to understand the changes around him, Alec reveals the shocking truth behind the red stars: many people are no longer fully present in their bodies at all, but living through advanced proxy forms while their real selves remain hidden away. Taken to see the system firsthand, Bill discovers a transparent chamber where the true body lies suspended while a proxy works in the world, sustained by light, gas, and careful synchronization. What begins as a homecoming becomes a nightmare of alienation, bodily identity, and the price of engineered perfection, leaving Bill battered, disgusted, and increasingly out of place in a society that has traded human presence for convenience and near-immortality. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.