The Stellar Legion

The Venusian swamplands are a crucible. Sweltering heat, endless rain, and the Nahali beyond the earthworks six feet of scaly muscle with scarlet eyes and a touch that kills. The Stellar Legion is humanity's final line: outcasts, criminals, and volunteers pressed into service, held together by nothing but the uniforms they wear and the walls that keep the scaly tide at bay. When the young commandant Lehn calls for three volunteers to reconnoiter Nahali territory a suicide mission if ever there was one Ian MacIan steps forward. The white-haired, space-burned Earthman carries a secret that followed him across the solar system, and now he's walking into the mist where the piping never stops and the natives are waiting. This is Leigh Brackett at her leanest and meanest: a planetary romance stripped to its bones, where loyalty and betrayal are the same coin and every man on the line is there because the system had nowhere else to put him. The action is brutal, the atmosphere suffocating, and the bonds of forced brotherhood carry a weight that no electro-cannon can match. For readers who like their science fiction raw, their heroes tarnished, and their odds worst when the rain finally breaks.