Voodoo Planet

Dane Thorson's latest assignment on the waterlogged frontier world of Xecho turns dangerous the moment Chief Ranger Kort Asaki arrives with a request that sounds like a warning. He needs Dane, Captain Jellico, and medic Tau to travel to Khatka, a wealthy hunting preserve world where beauty, politics, and old superstitions hide a far more lethal truth. Khatka was founded by escaped prisoners from Earth's brutal racial conflicts and reshaped into a rigid society ruled by five gifted families. Now it draws elite hunters to its no-kill preserves, while poachers and predators alike vanish in its jungles and swamps. Asaki fears that a series of mysterious deaths, and the rising influence of the hereditary witch doctor Lumbrilo, may point to a power that is either cunning deception or something truly beyond science. Once on Khatka, the crew is battered by hostile terrain, sand worm traps, poisonous plants, and savage native wildlife. A hypnotic ritual, a terrifying beast that proves to be illusion, and a psychic struggle between Tau and Lumbrilo push the investigation into a clash of reason, authority, and "magic." But the deeper Dane goes, the clearer it becomes that the real hunt is for the truth behind a world where survival depends on courage, wit, and the ability to see through fear. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.