descended from a series of English ship captains (as well as some spaceship captains and explorers), and many of his actions in this book are compared to his ancestors' heroism with sailing ships. Trent is hired by a group of merchants who have been losing money because of the activities of a group of pirates in a rather isolated area of the Galaxy. His new ship, the Yarrow, will be augmented by a special weapon, which will be controlled by its inventor, an engineer named McHinney. But, Trent tells the merchants, he doesn't hold with gadgets. Nonetheless, he is compelled to take McHinney and his new weapon.
The rest of the novel, then, is a somewhat episodic account of Trent's various encounters with the pirates -- usually preceded by the spectacular failure of McHinney's weapon, after which Trent does things the way he wanted too. In one case he rescues the daughter of an influential politician, and he starts to feel responsible for her. And she seems quite interested in him. That changes Trent's emotional involvement when the politician, assuming the pirate problem has been solved, lets his daughter travel again. So Trent (all along claiming to be a gruff unsentimental ship captain) heads out on a final mission to finally take on the pirates at their planetary base, and once and for all eliminate them.
It's all, well, what you expect. The love story is perfunctory, really, but it has its cute aspects. The science doesn't really bear close inspection. The plot details, and the battles, are pretty implausible. Certainly this is not Leinster at anything close to his best. He's enough of a pro that I still kind of enjoyed the story -- but it's pretty minor work, no doubt. (Strange At Ectaban)
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