The Lost Kafoozalum

What begins as a post-examination getaway for Lizzie Lee and her fellow Russett College students becomes something far stranger when they find themselves abducted by an unidentified spacecraft and enlisted for a mission that could spark an interplanetary war. The "Gilgamesh," a lost ship harboring dangerous political secrets, has been discovered on the newly charted planet Incognita, and Lizzie and her classmates are the only ones who can retrieve it before the wrong faction claims it. But this is no straightforward rescue. As the students face psychological testing, hidden agendas, and their own simmering fears, Lizzie must also confront what she truly wants: from the mysterious Professor M'Clare to her own place in a universe suddenly much larger than Earth. Pauline Ashwell combines genuine adventure with a wry understanding of how perception and desire interweave, and how a well-timed delusion might be exactly what's needed to defuse dangerous egos. For readers who want their science fiction with psychological texture, romantic undercurrents, and a sense that the universe's strangeness reveals as much about the self as about stars.