The Starmen

Michael Trehearne was a changeling. When he stood on the hillside in Brittany and watched the strange rites, he had been searching for his past. He found it there--and he also found his future: the beautiful and mysterious girl called Shairn--and the faraway stars! When he saw her his mind was full of all the things that had oppressed and worked and driven him since childhood, the nagging little mysteries about himself to which now he would find the key. Their meeting was the key. It unlocked the doorway to the stars and plunged him into breath-taking adventures out across the universe toward an unknown fate--and face to face with the Law of the Vardda. He had no dread for the Vardda, for they weren't conquerors, they were merchant-adventurers amidst the stars. Yet he did have awe for them. He felt he was a man gone astray in a titan's dream. The dream at first seemed a nightmare. The shrill old voice of the crone had whispered in his memory, "Every other year the Devil sends his sons and daughters." But it was no dream, he knew. The alluring Shairn was real--and she was more like an angel in her loose short tunic of some strange fabric the color of flame, belted over soft dark trousers by a jewelled band. This science fiction novel of Michael Trehearne, Shairn and the Starmen is an enthralling story. But for all its sweep and grandeur, it is a warm story with human emotions.