After nine books of Capt. W. E. Johns's 'Interplanetary Adventures', I realised that he'd run out of ideas. It suddenly seemed entirely appropriate that Piccolo only reprint the first six of them in paperback, because the next three are only worth the effort for completists. Given that, the tenth didn't seem particularly appealing but, rather surprisingly, Johns changed up his formula to provide something largely new that's actually a lot of fun. Convenient, sure, but a lot of fun nonetheless.

Of course, it was still the end of the series and, while Johns' foreword doesn't actually say that it was going to be the final book, it's pretty clear if we read between the lines. After all, 'Kings of Space' was published in 1954, when mankind was just dipping its toes into the realm beyond our atmosphere. It took until 1957 for us to get a satellite into space, and then a mammal, that being when Laika reached orbit. 1959 is when things got serious, with our first rocket to reach escape velocity, our detection of solar wind, our first weather satellite, our first photograph of Earth from orbit, our first impact on the Moon and the first photos of its dark side. And by that point, Johns was already on book six of his series. Reality was catching up to him.

By the time this book was released in 1963, we'd put both men and women into space and Johns had to acknowledge that. Given how much science he'd got horribly wrong within this series, it seems almost surprising that he got realistic in his foreword. "Anyone who lives for a few more years," he suggests, "will not only see people from Earth on the Moon, the starting point for space exploration, but will in all probability be able to watch them—on television." A "few more years," it should be pointed out turned out to be only six.

I have to assume that, if Johns believed the Moon was so close to our grasp, that this series had run its course. After all, he'd put dinosaurs on the Moon, human beings on Venus and an entire plot strand on Mars, which he was repopulating with people from Mino, now that its mosquito problem had been solved. He simply couldn't carry on that plot strand with real human beings telling him that he got everything wrong, with photographic evidence to back it up. So he chose to rattle out one more of his 'Interplanetary Adventures', have fun with it and then hang it up for good.

That's probably why we're already in flight on the 'Tavona' as chapter one begins. Our intrepid explorers are on their way to Venus and then to Mars, but what's that up ahead? A human body floating in space? In a kilt? Suddenly there's a mystery to solve, after burying the gentleman on the Moon under a cairn of rocks, of course. After all, it wouldn't do to bring him home and risk arrest for murder.

There are plenty of clues. For one, he's wearing Macpherson tartan. For two, his cap carries the name of the shop where he bought it. So we spend two whole chapters on Earth, likely the most thus far in the series, and we travel forty miles to Inverness, likely the furthest we've travelled from Glensalich Castle without leaving the planet. Certainly, we spend more time about it than when we retrieved Rolto from the lunatic asylum after he landed on Earth and told everyone he was from Mars.

Anyway, the mysterious corpse belongs to Ian Macpherson, who was a gamekeeper for Col. Sir Murdo Tulloch of Drumas, who they conveniently bump into in the shop. Apparently he started onto the moor an entire year earlier with his colleague, Donald Graham, a few days before the Glorious Twelfth, the start of the shooting season, but they never returned. Mysteriously, they left their bags and guns behind, even their dogs, who returned home scared by something.

Sir Murdo has questions of course but so does Prof. Brane and it all serves as excellent setup. However, the police are likely to have more and so, when they come knocking on the Glensalich Castle door, our explorers hightail it into space before they have to conjure up any answers less outrageous than the truth. And, of course, the mission of the day is to find Donald Graham. His colleague is dead, but he's still missing, presumably alive. The first clue comes from Grantos, a Minoan who they helped save from Barida last time out in 'Worlds of Wonder'. Apparently, he recently met a man from Vallon in the Fourth Region who was eating a jammy sandwich. It's a fad over there, apparently. And so off we go to Vallon.

Here, the story returns somewhat to normal, with the 'Tavona' stopping at a few planets on the way to look around. Even here, Johns changes up his formula a little. For instance, space travel, even at interstellar speeds, is boring and this series has effectively pointed that out but I never could figure out why our inquisitive explorers from Earth didn't take something with them that would help pass the time. The Minoans go into their self-induced hibernation mode but it feels weird to me that Prof. Brane doesn't write or Rex play games to while away the hours. Here, Rex has progressed to playing patience and doing crossword puzzles, but it's still solitary activity. I would take games to play with others too.

Anyway, they stop at one planet that seems empty except for a tobacco tin, containing Players Navy Cut, which seems like another clue. So does the stranded ship that's stuck in the mud. And the naked black man, who turns out to be a Zulu named Ebutu who works for an Englishman in Tanganyika, which apparently makes him sound like a plantation slave from the deepsouth of the States. "Quick, boss. Dey's a comin'." Ugh. At least he turns out to be a brave man who does brave deeds, even if he needs to be returned home by the white man. He's survived here with a population of giant frogs getting in his business and he saves Graham, after they find him on a nearby planet being worshipped as a god.

The biggest surprise is that, spoiler alert, Graham doesn't actually want to come home. He has married a girl on Vallon and they're having a wonderful time there, as we can tell given a level of cultural impact that's already carrying news of jammy sandwiches to other planets. It's nice to see that Johns knows how to wrap up character storylines in enjoyable ways. Unfortunately, he forgets to do that with everybody else, because we run out of pages before he even tries to wrap up the series.

And so, while the mystery of the man who vanished into space is solved, there are a whole slew of loose ends left dangling with no more books to come. Prof. Brane never does find his perfect planet to serve as a backup for humanity should we do something stupid and render the Earth uninhabitable. Rolto never does do anything about the threat we serve to Mino and the solar system at large, just cause mischief. Talking of Rolto's mischief, we never return to Lila to get a deeper understanding of how the lost tribe of Israel ended up there. We never find a cure for death, but that one's fair enough. The Minoans still don't allow women onto spaceships, which isn't fair enough at all.

The one dangling plot strand that doesn't remotely seem fair is that we don't even come close to a resolution for Rex and Morino's relationship, which has been theoretically growing since they went wing flying together in the second book, 'Return to Mars'. It, like everything else, is left hanging, even though more than one character from more than one planet has suggested that they tie the knot and become an interplanetary married couple. I'm OK with not going as far as that, given concerns that Rex has already covered, but there should be some resolution. Leaving them hanging just isn't cricket, as Tiger might say. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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