A story in the Breeder World Universe
World War Three has come and gone, most of the world population are dead. The survival of the race is now at grave risk and society has changed beyond recognition. Learn what happened and what was done to keep the human race alive. - This short story sets the background for the rest of the stories in the universe.
As the space fleets of an outraged Terran Confederation close in on the outlaw planet of Fruyling's World, the destinies of slave and master meet explosively, and from the shock of battle and its aftermath come an unexpected and awesome conclusion.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Earth is effectively a corporate technocracy, with big businesses using incredible advances in science to improve life on the planet as a whole. Seeking other planets habitable for the growing human population, the spaceship Callisto, powered by an antigravitational force known as apergy, embarks on a momentous tour of the solar system. Jupiter proves to be a wilderness paradise, full of threatening beasts and landscapes of inspired beauty...
The story starts with a comet that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. Some forty people of various nations and ages are condemned to a two-year-long journey on the comet.
An obsessed amateur scientist steals a diamond (and murders its owner) in order to make a lens for a super-powerful microscope; his experiment succeeds but he is driven mad by what he discovers.