Search Worlds Without End

It is six hundred years in the future and mankind has learned to move between the stars... by going into Two-Space, the vast realm where sentient wooden ships travel beneath canvas sails in a universe that is corrosive to technology.

As they charged headlong into the galaxy, humans discovered others who were already there: The elven Sylvans who live in the vast forests of low-gravity worlds, the dwarven Dwarrowdelf who thrive deep in the mines of high-gravity worlds, and other, far more alien races. The ancient Sylvan race is enchanted by the human culture, embracing Tolkien as prophecy and taking "classic" human science fiction as a guide.

Against this stellar backdrop, Lt. Thomas Melville's ship is mortally wounded in a cowardly surprise attack. With his captain killed, Melville must capture a feral, sentient enemy ship, then fight his way across the galaxy to warn of the vast invading armada. In an odyssey of turmoil and battle he forges his ship and crew into a mighty weapon of war and earns the love of an alien princess.

Now, if he can only survive the attacks of two very angry alien empires, and avoid being court martialed by his own nation of Westerness for getting them involved in a vast intergalactic war, he might live to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

A general in virtual reality warfare, now he was in danger of becoming a low-ranking corpse in realtime!

New Kashubia was a planet rich in heavy metals, but utterly lacking in carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Even dirt had to be imported at great expense. The colonists, moved there from Earth against their will, lived in tunnels drilled through solid gold but still were the poorest people in the universe. Since their only resource was people, they sent draftees out as mercenaries, fighting in tanks in symbiosis with a highly intelligent computer. And Mickolai Derdowski had fought bravely and brilliantly for nearly a decade, losing many friends in the process, and risen to the rank of General--he thought.

But then he found out that it was all in virtual reality. The war had been faked, no one had died, and he was still just a tank commander, not a general at all. But New Kashubia had been well paid by the planet that had hired the mercenaries for the war they had faked, severe food rationing back home was no longer necessary, and people could now afford such extravagant luxuries as food, homes and clothing.

There was just one problem. A real war was looming on the horizon and this one couldn't be settled in cyberspace. A lot of people might get really, permanently killed. Such as Mickolai...

The virtual-reality mercenaries of a boy and his tank face a new menace -- and there's nothing virtual about it!

First, the involuntary colonists of New Kashubia rescued their planet from crushing debt by becoming virtual-reality mercenaries, then they successfully revolted against the oppressive government of Earth, but now they are menaced by the Mitchegai, a species whose biology has made them inherently evil. The carnivorous adults lay and abandon vast numbers of eggs, some of which grow into vegetarian juveniles, which are the adults' only food supply. Their culture has no family life, they eat only meat, have nothing like sex, and their main pleasures are gambling, art, and killing each other. They are an ancient civilization, millions of years old, with thousands of densely populated star systems in their realm. Lacking an immune system, they must completely sterilize any planet before they colonize it. The region of the galaxy they occupy is rapidly expanding... and Human Space is their next frontier!

A fragile wooden Ship, complete with canvas sails, was sailing between the stars. This was patently, embarrassingly impossible, of course, but fortunately the Ship didn't know that, and neither did her crew.

Actually, it was more like two, old-fashioned three-masted sailing ships, cut off at the waterline and joined together like some bizarre 'siamese twin' of a Ship. And if you happened to be out in interstellar space as the Ship whizzed by, you couldn't actually see it, because it was in another dimension and it was going far, far faster than the speed of light. But it was there, take our word for it.

It is six hundred years in the future and mankind has learned to move between the stars... by going into Two-Space, the vast realm where sentient wooden ships travel beneath canvas sails in a universe that is corrosive to technology.

As they charged headlong into the galaxy, humans discovered others who were already there: The elven Sylvans who live in the vast forests of low-gravity worlds, the dwarven Dwarrowdelf who thrive deep in the mines of high-gravity worlds, and other, far more alien races. The ancient Sylvan race is enchanted by the human culture, embracing Tolkien as prophecy and taking classic human science fiction as a guide.