Thunderworld: Zach Hughes

When the crew of the four-person scout ship Santa Maria first sighted the new life-zone planet, they called it "Worthless". A little too far from the mother sun for comfort, caught in the grip of conflicting gravitational pulls, it was a planet in constant uproar and not at all fit for human colonisation. Still, time was running short for the people of Earth to find a new home and this was the first place that approached even remotely livable conditions. Don and Zees decide to do close up study of the surface while Breed and Ellen stay in orbit overhead. But just after they landed there came a cataclysmic upheaval that killed many of the primitive life forms and left Don and Zees stranded. Forced to go native and live off the land until their crew mates could rescue them. they had no idea that the next meal they ate would change the future of the planet. Cover art by Paul Alexander.