Trover
Reviewed date: 2013 Dec 12
88 pages
The tagline for Trover is "A tale the Grand Master [Edgar Rice Burroughs] might have written during the 1980s--a little off-world adventure featuring a thick-headed hero and the always surprising young heroine!" Sounds like fun.
The hero is a scoundrel. Malcolm Kirk was kicked off his ship after he ran up gamblings debts with the rest of the crew. Stranded on the planet Paran, he falls in with a Parani girl named Cindy--and Parani women are "famous galaxy wide as the most alluring." Together they work for a Marva's Merchandizer's Protection Agency, repossessing vehicles from people who haven't kept up their payments.
Cindy falls madly in love with Malcolm, but Malcolm seems interested only in earning enough to buy a ticket off-world. He supplements his income by running a secret poker den--you see, he owns "the only Earthman-made deck of cards in the sector."
When Marva offers a bounty of 40,000 credits to repossess the starship Praetues and its cargo, Malcolm smells a rat. He discovers that the Praetues is carrying cargo stolen from the Berinatin, which was recently lost without a trace. What cargo? "A shipment of desperately needed werepox serum destined for the epidemic-riddled planet of Acromni."
Malcolm saves the day and gets the girl, of course.