GLORY'S PEOPLE

Starship Glory's third planetfall (Glory, 1993, etc.) is Yamato, a world settled by Japanese, where a medieval social structure is overlaid with modern technology. The various quarreling clans, ruled by an aging Shogun, have somehow invented a faster-than-light space drive. At Glory's last port of call, captain Duncan Kr and his crew battled the Terror, a dreadful space creature that can manifest itself at whatever time and place it chooses. Now the Terror—it seems to feed on strong emotions—has appeared in the Yamatan system, shredding spaceships and pulping crews. Duncan's plan to defeat it involves the new space drive, but the more conservative Yamatan factions reject his proposal and hire a ninja assassin to kill him. Two ninja attacks fail. Meanwhile, the Terror continues its rampage, then appears above the planet as a Red Sprite, intent on absorbing energy from the planet's storms. Glory's intelligent cats can detect the Terror long before the humans can, so eventually Duncan, cats, crew, and Yamatans (including, of course, the ninja) set off in an experimental ship for a showdown with the Terror. Hardworking but predictable, with interchangeable characters and an old-hat space menace set against an unsurprising backdrop.