The Escape Orbit

Cover Artist and Interior Jack Gaughan

STRANDED ON A PLANET OF MONSTERS

When the survivors of his starship were taken prisoner by the insect-creatures against whom Earth had fought a bitter war for nearly a century, Sector Marshal Warren expected to be impounded in a prison camp like those the EArthmen maintained. But the "Bugs" had a simpler method of dealing with prisoners--they dumped them on an uninhabited planet, without weapons or tools, and left them to fend for themsselves against the planet's environment and strange monsters. A "Bug" spaceship orbited above, guarding them.

Escape was impossible, the "Bugs" told them--but it was absolutely necessary, for reasons Warren couldn't tell even his own men.