POUL ANDERSON – Mayday Orbit. Ace Double F-104, paperback original, 1961. Published back-to-back with No Man’s World, by Kenneth Bulmer. First appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, December 1959, as “A Message in Secret.” Reprinted in several Poul Anderson collections.

   This is one of Poul Anderson’s long-running series of stories about Captain Sir Dominick Flandry, a field agent of the Naval Intelligence Corps of the Terrestrial Empire, or at least that’s his rank this time around. I’ve read quite a few of his adventures over the years, but without regard to chronology or trying to read a whole lot of them at once.

   Which can be done and very easily. Both Ace and Baen Books have published large collections of the Flandry stories as well as other of Anderson’s other series, including those about the Psychotechnic League. I’ve tried to keep up, but there are too many stories, including full-length novels, for one person to read them all and have time to read something else as well.

   Mayday Orbit turns out to be a puzzle story and well as a good old-fashioned space opera yarn. Flandry is working undercover on an isolated planet that’s in a buffer zone in space between the rival realms of Terra and Merseia. Each empire is always on the lookout for suitable outposts to place their ships and troops.

   His cover doesn’t last long, however, and he’s soon on the run with a female slave whom he helps escape the ruling power of the planet. Most of the book is spent following the couple’s path to safety, which at one point requires Flandry to set a huge plain of dry grassland on fire.

   Where the puzzle comes in, though, as far as Flandry is concerned, is how does he get word off-planet to the Terran forces to let them know what nefarious activities are going on? The cover pretty much gives it away, in a way, but Anderson does his best to prolong the solution for as long as possible.

   It’s an average story at best, only 126 pages long, but Anderson does keep things moving at a brisk pace. As a writer, he was much better at writing descriptive passages than he was at portraying characters with any kind of depth. At least in this one he doesn’t need to spend too much time having his characters explain to each other what each other should already know.