Just missing the tall, gaunt man who dodged down the stairs of the Earth Embassy. A figure loomed in a doorway and he snapped off a quick blaster shot at it--missed. He'd killed one man, wounded others--and was carrying papers stolen from the secret Embassy files. They had to stop him--but they couldn't! And, worlds away, the men of Department 99 watched on their galaxy-spanning view-screen. knowing they were responsible for this disaster--and powerless to do anything about it!
Allan Stern and his secretary Beatrice Kendricks after they awake in New York City, one thousand years after an asteroid destroys most life on earth. In the third book, Allan marries Beatrice (they finally have sex after two years) and with the people of the Abyss set off to build a new civilization on the surface. Yes they run into a few problems along the way (mostly a tribe of semi-human flesh eaters), but Allan is always able to work things out, with Beatrice by his side.
When you have an engine with no fuel, and fuel without an engine, and a life-and-death deadline to meet, you have a problem indeed. Unless you are a stubborn Dutchman--and Jan Van Artevelde was the stubbornest Dutchman on Venus.