Stopover

With the Scorpio syndicate closed down, Kevin Jarrat and Jerry Stone are on furlough, aboard the starclipper Pacifica and headed for an island resort in Rethan's tropics, but downtime becomes an explosive excursion into an industrial hell-zone.

When the clipper suffers engine trouble and must detour to the halfway station of Sheckley for repairs, the vacation dissolves into unexpected and unpredictable hazard.

Stone is fascinated to take the "ten cent tour" and experience the "gas can with lights" where Jarrat spent his youth. The tour turns deadly when they run into escapees from Scorpio who recognize Jarrat as his undercover persona of Max Tyler.

The NARC captains find themselves making a flight right into Hades. Cut off from NARC, the carrier, backup and weapons, they're on their own devices, surviving on their wits. Making it to that island resort starts to look like an impossible fantasy.

A Pocket-sized NARC page-turner, falling between SCORPIO and APHELION; readers whimsically designated it 'NARC #3.5!