It's possible that you won't agree with us that Pat Pending's latest adventure is a delightful story--possible IF you haven't been used to laughing in recent years. Blue Book printed more than a dozen of these stories by Nelson Bond about the "greatest inventulator of all time".
A stellar communications repairman is sent to repair a beacon on a planet, and discovers that its presence had a profound influence on the planet in question. Needing to deal with a locally evolved sentience and a bizarre ritual, the repairman needs to use his best plan to complete his mission and end up alive and whole too.
He was tired of people--a "human interest" columnist, who specializes in glamorizations of the commonplace and sordid is likely to get that way. So. this starship seemed to offer the ideal escape from it all
Tim is recovered from the escape pod and starts a new life as the captain of an Alien spaceship. Which is controlled by an AI. He travels and builts his crew of sexies females Aliens.
Mike Kenscott is having a really bad vacation. One minute he's camping in the Sierra Mountains with his brother Andy, and the next minute he's on a different world. Now he's Adric, Lord of the Crimson Tower, of the Rainbow City of Narabedla. He has to cope with his fellow Narabedlans: the Dreamer Rhys, the mysterious veiled Gamine, the dwarf Idris, his brother Evarin the Toymaker (whose Toys are deadly), and Karamy, the golden witch, who is either his lover or his greatest enemy...
Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors. For the grim reality was that some deadly outer-space power had usurped control of the great artificial moon. A lovely woman had disappeared; passengers were being fleeced and enslaved; and, using fantastic disguises, imposters were using the Station for their own mysterious ends...