Pattern for Conquest: An Interplanetary Adventure

Jumping forward in time several hundred years, the reader find himself in a future where space travel is commonplace. Spaceships of mankind criscross from planet to planet, carrying civilization out of our Solar System to the stars behond. Alien people are encountered on strange worlds and fascinating situations are experienced. Vast fleets of spacships clash in battle. Mankind of the future, the story relates, has united itself into a Solar Combine. Progressive and powerful, this Combine explores its frontiers of space, confident in its unthreatened security. And then come the two Little Men. As agents of an older, more intelligent race they seen mankind's co-operation in a mysterious plan. the Solar Combine agrees to investigate a tiny object, passing through their section of the universe, which the Little Men vaguely insis is a "threat to civilization." A task force of the Space Guard is sent on the mission. The reader meets the three guardsmen in commandL Stellor Downing, Martian born, hard of nature, cold and calculating and murdersously swift, wearing a modine weapon on each hip. Clifford Lane, Venusian born, handsome and fearless wildman, gay and impetuous with a mind like a hair-trigger. And Bobby Thompson, Earth born, whose calm judgment knits the three of them into a powerful unit. They lead their ships into the territory of the catmen—and finally against the dreaded Loard-vodh, who sweep the Galaxy into a gigantic war.