The Independent Command

When the spiderlike Fibians launch an attack against Earth and its colonies, flight engineer Peter Raeder takes over command of the starship Invincible from the ship's injured captain and journeys behind enemy lines to stop the raiders, but he soon finds himself lost in alien space, with a damaged ship, and discovers a strange secret about the monstrous Fibians. Reprint.

The third Flight Engineer yarn seems to conclude the adventures of Peter Raeder, at least as a Star Command officer. He and convalescing Sarah James have just become lovers when the insectoid Fibians launch a major attack on Star Command bases and human-inhabited planets. Succeeding to command of Invincible , Raeder takes her out on an improvised reconnaissance mission and, by a freak of physics, ends up taking a Fibian prisoner. He steadily unravels the Fibians' secret, which is that they are divided into a number of clans, of which only one, the youngest and most ruthless, is allied with the fanatical human Mollies against the rest of humanity. Horrified at their cousins' penchants for recreational sex and torturing prisoners, the other Fibian clans, who may have a hivelike society but include many admirably individualized characters, ally themselves with Star Command. That ends the war, reduces Star Command strength, and leaves Raeder anticipating a new career as a freelance explorer. Without pretensions and, of its kind, nearly flawless entertainment. Roland Green
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