Spaceman on a Spree

Seymour Pond has spent years hauling himself through the claustrophobic, joyless grind of interplanetary flight, surviving Moon, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter runs, as well as the mental strain known as space cafard. At last retired with enough Basic shares to live by his own modest standards, he sees his gold watch and banquet honors not as a loss to humanity, but as a hard-won escape from danger, duty, and misery. Yet in a future ruled by an Ultrawelfare State, comfort can be as controlling as sacrifice, and Pond's retirement becomes a problem for the Department of Space Exploration. Academician Lofting Gubelin and Hans Girard-Perregaux believe civilization itself is stagnating, and that only renewed space exploration can restore human ambition. So they turn to Natalie Paskov, an agent of Extraordinary Services Incorporated, to lure Pond back with seduction, gambling, and the promise of high life. What begins as a night of luxury in Manhattan's glittering social scene ends in ruin, manipulation, and a darkly comic expose of a society where even salvation is engineered by dirty tricks. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.