Ran Rarak, captain of a cruiser belonging to the Federation of Stars, has been called back from duty to confront an extraordinary threat. The Dark Star, which is being tracked by the Bureau of Astronomical Knowledge, has changed course and is now veering dangerously close to the Sun. Ran Rarak must lead a fleet of ships to confront this menace.

Today's story is "The Star-stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. It appeared in the February 1929 issue of "Weird Tales" on pages 149 to 168 and 279 to 288.

Edmond Moore Hamilton (October 21, 1904 – February 1, 1977) was an American writer of science fiction during the mid-twentieth century. He is known for writing most of the Captain Future stories.

Hamilton was a central member of the remarkable group of Weird Tales writers assembled by editor Farnsworth Wright, that included H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Through the late 1920s and early 1930s Hamilton wrote for all of the science fiction pulp magazines then publishing, and contributed horror and thriller stories to various other magazines as well. He was popular as an author of space opera, a subgenre he created along with E. E. Smith. His story "The Island of Unreason" (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best science fiction story of the year (this was the first science fiction prize awarded by the votes of fans, a precursor of the later Hugo Awards).

In 1942 Hamilton began writing for DC Comics, specializing in stories for their characters Superman and Batman. He and artist Sheldon Moldoff created Batwoman in Detective Comics #233 (July 1956).

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"Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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