Cap Kennedy
17 primary works
Book 1
FREE ACTING TERRAN ENVOY
F.A.T.E.
Captain Kennedy, Earth's trouble shooter carries the Banner of Terran against the unknown sciences and alien psychologies of a thousand worlds.
The crack in the cosmos that has to be sealed!
FATE is the space hero series that has become a must wherever Science Fiction is read. A solid space adventure more exciting than "Startrek" and far more real than "Perry Rhodan". Look out for further titles in this exciting series.
Book 2
HUMAN VS INHUMAN
To the reptilian mind - especially the intelligent type of planets like Sergan and Obrac - the lives of others were as nothing to the need for status.
To the feline mind - especially to the clever advisor of the master of Sergan - the agonies of others were not only of no consequence, they could even be a source of joy.
So when these two types of inhuman intelligences got together to defy the Terran orders against interplanetary kidnapping, space hijacking, and human slavery, it was definitely a case for a top-notch secret agent. Because Earth could not afford a showdown with more than one alien species at a time.
The secret agent was Cap Kennedy, Free Acting Terran Envoy, and his pursuit of the SLAVE SHIP FROM SERGAN turned out to be one of his most dangerous single-handed adventures.
Book 3
"Destiny awaits the world of Metelaze. Mighty will be our future. To us will come the races of the galaxy. To us will come the wealth of a universe.
"Too long have we rested beneath the Terran heel. Very soon now we shall strike off the chains of our oppressors. Metelaze shall be free!"
This sort of propaganda was always common among the demagogues of backward planets that had received help from Terra. But Metelaze was different. For there the promise held out was that secrets of the ancient pre-galactic science were becoming available, that an offer was being made that "could not be refused."
To Cap Kennedy fell the task of finding out. Were there really unknown scientific marvels available on Metelaze? Who was behind these offers of total power and absolute wealth? What, in fact, was the monster of Metelaze?
And how could such a monster out of time and space be stopped?
Book 4
FREE ACTING TERRAN ENVOY
F.A.T.E.
Alien scientists had learned how to release the ravening beast-instincts buried in the recesses of the human brain from the far distant past.
Now they were willing to sell their knowledge to the highest bidder in exchange for an alliance against Terra. And they had many willing to bargain with them.
Captain Kennedy, the top man of the Free Acting Terran Envoys - FATE - was assigned to stop this terrifying menace. But he knew immediately that his greatest danger lay within himself - and that by challenging the alien scientists he could turn himself and his friends into beasts beyond imagining!
Book 5
FREE ACTING TERRAN ENVOY
F.A.T.E.
Captain Kennedy lay between life and death after his mind had been hurled a million years into the past.
To break the spell of the Jewel of Jarhen which held the Captain in its thrall, three members of FATE had to pit all their formidable skills against a terrible enemy.
The danger to Captain Kennedy's life was matched by the peril to an entire world. It was an inexorable race against time for the FATE team as they tried to break the mystery of the pre-galactic artifact on which all the horror hinged.
Book 6
FREE ACTING TERRAN ENVOY
F.A.T.E.
Seetee is the most dangerous substance in the universe - bring it into contact with the most stable of normal material and it explodes with enormous energy and destruction.
When Captain Kennedy and his crew, the top men of F.A.T.E. - Free Acting Terran Envoys - accidentally brush against some Seetee they not only thank their lucky stars for their escape, but realise it signals an emergency of the highest order.
Because such a swarm as they have encountered could cause the destruction of an entire solar system. And thy have reason to believe it is directed at out Sun - including particularly the Earth!
Book 7
DOORWAY TO UTOPIA
"Beyond that curtain of darkness lies paradise."
That was the promise of the doorway known as the Gholan Gate, a doorway so ancient that its makers had vanished millions of years before the first Earthly life crawled out of the primeval oceans. It was still functioning in the possession of its discoverers.
To go through it was to enter a universe where all your dreams came true - where your every wish was obeyed, every fantasy became reality, where you could play God to your heart's content.
But there was a price, for once beyond the Gholan Gate, you would live only in hopes for a second visit, and a third. . . . And to get the right for that return to paradise a man would sell his soul, his people, his world.
Cap Kennedy entered THE GHOLAN GATE once . . . and the result became cosmic history.
Book 8
THE VAULT IN THE VALLEY
On a far semi-desert world, shunned by trade routes, and unattractive to star travellers, there is a barren and isolated valley. Dominating this valley is a great time-eroded Sphinx-like construction - a mass known to the few who have looked upon it as the Skull of Sykoris.
Cap Kennedy followed a dangerous trail across many worlds - a trail of murder, duels, and evil - to find that it ended there, before the Skull, confronting a mystery older than all mankind.
Beneath that Sphinx lay something desired by Earth's old enemies. Beneath it lay something that lured the criminal minds of many worlds. But what it was none knew - until Cap Kennedy himself released the frightful power of the Eater of Worlds.
Book 9
THROUGH THE TERROR TOROID
It could have been a black hole - one of those terrifying rips in space that defy all laws. That it was artificial in origin did not make it any less deadly.
Worst of all, that strange extra-galactic torus was drifting into an intersect with Earth in its orbit. The result would be devastation beyond concept.
Cap Kennedy and his three companions were considered expendable in such a cause. And Cap himself volunteered to dare the impossible - to turn that cosmic hole aside.
What he fell into was an adventure utterly different than anything he had expected. The novel of EARTH ENSLAVED is a real surprise package for the legion of Cap Kennedy's followers.
Book 10
ENTER DR. KAIFENG . . .
Of all possible enemies, Cap Kennedy had yet to cross swords with the legendary master of galactic villainy, Dr Kaifeng. In the struggle for the mind of the tyrant of Papan, they finally met - and Kennedy was the loser.
There was only one chance to save the situation and that was to pay the price of the enigmatic super-surgeons of the Kraid. He would have to take a role in their eternal play-acting. The stage would be the past, a barbaric world of swords and sorcery. Kennedy would be just a sword-wielding freebooter with a crew of murderous puppets at his back. And if he survived, Kaifeng would be waiting at the stage door.
Book 11
IN THE "DOC" SMITH TRADITION
The planet was fine for big game hunters. And it was the tradition there that one must have a trophy before one could call oneself truly a man.
If that were all, it would hardly interest Cap Kennedy because his trophies consisted of planets saved for Terra and missions accomplished. But there was something on Eriadne which was not just a hunt trophy - something which required the presence of Kennedy and his men to check on. One of these things was a fragment of Zheltyana construction which outdated all civilisation.
But the hunt proved to be a double one - Kennedy against an unslayable monster and a lost world of monsters against Kennedy. And if he lost, it would be Terra itself that would be a trophy on some alien's hunting lodge wall.
SPAWN OF LABAN is one of the best - a real edge-of-the-seat science fiction chiller in the tradition of Edward E. Smith and Edmond Hamilton
Book 12
THE HAND OF DR KAIFENG
By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-race - that was the ideal of many scientific Utopians.
By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-army - that was a dream of many military commanders.
By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a horde of obedient but brilliant monsters - that was the scheme of Dr. Kaifeng.
For Cap Kennedy, the abduction of a dozen leading geneticists spelled trouble for Earth. For their trails led not to some idealist, or to some would-be Napoleon, but pointed only at the one man in the galaxy who might prove to be more powerful than the legions of Terra themselves.
Book 13
PILLAR OF FIRE
Millions of Years before humanity and other intelligent races learned to roam the Milky Way, the Zheltyana had created an empire among the stars - rose, triumphed, and vanished. All that remained were a few ruins, some artifacts, and the knowledge that their powerful scientific secrets awaited rediscovery.
One such secret had been found on the feudal planet Naxos, under the tyranny of the half-mad Idalia Ancanette. Her scientists had tapped its mystery to create a pillar of energy which promised to make Idalia mistress of a hundred worlds - if it did not destroy Naxos before it could be harnessed.
Such an event called for the attention of Earth's master agent, Cap Kennedy, and his scientific crew. Because that column of atomic fire was a beacon that could herald a millennium or end in A WORLD AFLAME.
Book 14
THE DAUGHTER OF KAIFENG
The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn't scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night - a whole MALACA barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons and building.
That's what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more - a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up. A beautiful woman, a princess she called herself - but Kennedy had seen her before - lying in a processing vat on a Kaifeng planetoid of warped genetics. Between the scientific machinations of the galaxy's most perverted mind and the spectral realities of a disputed world there had to be a meaning that boded no good for Terra - and that's where Kennedy came in.
Book 15
QUARANTINED PLANET
"On Dephene, the native life -form is peculiar and unique. All protoplasmic life is equal to and one with the mimics." On screen, the shape changed, altered into the shape of a man.
Then it changed. It shrank, dropped, lifted a snouted head in the semblance of a dog. It grew, spread wings and became a large bird which hopped and pecked. The wings vanished and a tall and lovely woman smiled from where the bird had halted. A dozen changes, a score until the mind reeled.
"These Mimics represent a threat to every world in the entire galaxy. Their power of mimicry would enable them to adopt the outward form of rulers and high officials. A man could never be certain that his companion was what he seemed to be."
When Kennedy went to Delphene the speculation became pure nightmare, for both he and his crew were being duplicated over and over - and so was the worlds-conqueror he sought to block.
Book 16
Three times had the scientific genius, Kaifeng, slipped through the hands of the men of FATE - and three times those equally fanatic guardians of the fragile structure of interworld peace had tracked him down again.
But now Kaifeng had something that the Free Acting Terran Envoys had never met before. He had a ship beyond all previous capacities, he had a crew of dedicated devils, and he had FATE's finest operative as his hostage.
And when FATE pursued him beyond the very Milky Way itself, beyond the Galactic Lens, things changed very rapidly - for out there Kaifeng had the means to enforce a stop to human progress - and he would not hesitate to use it!
It's a super-space-thriller in the Star Trek tradition!
Book 17
The things from beyond the Milky Way galaxy found the intelligent races of our universe amusingly slight. To them, possessors of vast cosmic power, the strivings of various humanoids to outdo each other were a source of contemptuous entertainment.
They established a contest between the worlds. It would be an Olympiad of the whole galaxy - a Galactiad. Let these puny interstellar intelligences meet each other in contest. Pit one against the other - and let the losers beware!
Earth had its team - a mixed group of powerful athletes and genius scientists. Because other worlds did not always believe in the ideal of good sportsmanship, they had to confront the reality. Win at all costs . . . or goodbye to humanity!