Plague Ship

Dane Thorson is just an apprentice Cargo Master, a kid in an oversized Trader's tunic, scrambling to prove himself aboard the free trader Solar Queen. When the Queen makes port at Sargol, Dane sees his chance: the planet's feline natives, the Salariki, hoard fabulous scented gemstones they'll barely part with, and every trader on the ring has failed to crack their monopoly. But Dane finds an angle no one else could, trading for an herb the Salariki desperately want. It's his triumph, his ticket to legitimacy. Then the stowaways come aboard, and everything burns. The plague that erupts on the Solar Queen is the kind that stops ships cold, spreads through cargo and crew alike, and leaves a captain with impossible choices. Dane's mistake becomes a locked-room nightmare at the edge of space, where the only cure might lie back on the very planet that spawned the infection. Andre Norton builds tension like a slow fuse, and Dane's youth becomes both his liability and his unexpected weapon in a story about what happens when a kid who's just trying to make good discovers that some mistakes can't be undone, only survived. This is early Norton at her best: crisp, propulsive, alien world-building that still feels fresh sixty years later. For readers who want their space opera lean and mean, with a protagonist they can root for and a problem that spirals just past the point of control.