THE ULTIMAX MAN

Minor hoodlum Damocles Montgomerie, whisked from the path of a speeding bullet to a concealed alien research center at the North Pole, achieves untold powers of cerebration in the course of having his brain picked by the donnish Xorialle. Once in command of his new abilities, Dammy promptly commandeers Xorialle's ship and sets out to track down the ""Galactic Concensus"" in the neighborhood of Deneb. The closer he gets, the more bewildering his discoveries about the origin of the whole adventure--the most curious pieces of the puzzle being a mild-mannered, bee-like creature by the name of Floss and a telepathic proto-hominid called Sport. Laumer, who can develop a science-fiction idea with some ingenuity (Bolo, 1976), never finds the right tone or style for this one; most events coast along in a fog of adolescent facetiousness that doesn't match the overall ambitions of the plot.