Outpost Mars

Mars was no paradise. But to Dr. Tony Hellman, it meant a second chance for man - and to Hugo Brenner it meant a world to plunder. Tony was the leading member of Sun Lake Colony, a band of frontier-extending Earth people -- intrepid space pioneers. Brenner was the planet's most powerful magnate, an operator who vast wealth was based on Earthmen's tragic addiction to the vicious drug, marcaine. When Brenner accused the Sun Lakers of stealing a hundred kilograms of the Martian drug, the colony was threatened with extermination unless the thief was found and the marcaine returned. Tony and his fellow colonists saw their second chance fading. Brenner's success would mean the end of their better world. Could the struggling colony survive the assaults of entrenched greed and persecution? The answer makes an absorbing science-fiction novel, one that has depth as well as action, human warmth as well as suspense and excitement.