Laboratory

On a remote laboratory world, the brilliant Vegan scientist Pud is desperately trying to conceal a maze of invisible experiments when a tiny human spaceship drops out of the sky. His nervous assistant Gop keeps making mistakes, and every misplaced probe, exposed field, and scraping tail threatens to reveal an entire planet-sized laboratory to the stranded explorers. Johnny and Helen Gorman, assuming they've found a barren world, begin repairing their damaged ship and gathering samples—until eerie flashes, strange sounds, and an unseen force make it clear that the planet is anything but empty. What follows is a madcap collision of first contact, scientific arrogance, and escalating disaster. Pud learns the visitors are from Earth, a young but ambitious race whose ship was crippled by a meteor strike, and the Vegans scramble to hide dangerous equipment as a tharn-field and space-warp generator fling the humans through bizarre layers of reality. Helen is hurled into nightmare landscapes of monstrous native beasts, Johnny is twisted by surreal energies, and Gop races through an intraspatial doorway in a frantic rescue attempt. As the lab erupts into cosmic chaos, Pud finally resorts to a time experiment to erase the encounter altogether—only to discover that the supposedly ignorant humans are still heading back to land. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.