Death Between the Stars

Helen Vargas is racing to Terra before interstellar war seals the routes home, so she takes the only passage available: a cargo ship bound for Samarra, where she must share a cramped cabin with Haalvordhen, a Theradin telepath humans are taught to distrust. What begins as an awkward act of necessity quickly becomes a collision of prejudice, law, and survival in deep space, sharpened by the intimate danger of telepathic contact. As launch turns brutal, Helen discovers that human favoritism has left Haalvordhen dangerously unprotected, and a violent blastoff leaves him badly injured. Fighting nausea, fear, and her own revulsion, she searches the ship's supplies, improvises in zero gravity, and injects the stimulant procalamine to keep him alive. But the rescue is shadowed by shame, secrecy, and the unsettling suspicion that minds may have touched more than thoughts. Afterward, Haalvordhen's final gift pulls Helen into a deeper transformation: drugged, pressured, and sent onward, she awakens to a life in a Theradin body, carrying both Terran rights and Theradin identity. On Samarra, the mystery widens into a haunting meditation on memory, inheritance, death, and rebirth—where identity survives, but never unchanged. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.