Search Worlds Without End

First of the three fabulous Alastor Cluster novels from Jack Vance, one of the finest authors ever to devote his career to science fiction, certainly one of the wittiest, most inventive, erudite and poetic. An absolutely wonderful novel.

The Alastor Cluster, thirty thousand inhabited worlds ruled by the mysterious Connatic.

Trullion, world 2262 of the Alastor Cluster, was a world of fens, mists, idyllic islands scattered in an aquatic setting of surpassing beauty with its shaggy trees like bursts of great chrysanthemums, its natural growth of fruits and all the richness the clear oceans provided for the easy taking.

The Trill were a lackadaisical, easy-living race-except for the planetwide game of hassade when a ferocious instinct for gambling drove them to risk all-home, friends, family, even life itself-on the teams that contested the water-checkerboard gaming fields.

With the prize the virginal body of a sheirl-maiden, a body any Trill is willing to die for...

His Past Was Gone-and There Were 3, 000 Worlds to Search for It!

From his fabulous palace on Nemenes, the Connatic ruled the sprawling Alastor Clustor. And kept track of the doings of each of his trillion or more subjects.

But there was one man he knew nothing about-for the past life of the wonderer called Pardero was a complete mystery. Pardero set himself two goals. Find out who he was.....and find his enemy, the person who had stolen his memory.

Psychologists deduced that his home world must be the mysterious Marune-a planet lit by four shifting suns.

Pardero made his way there-and was hailed as the Kaiark Efaim, ruler of the shadowed realm. Uncovering his last identity had been comparatively simple. Finding his sworn enemy would be more difficult - there were so many people to choose from!

This is the second book in the author's three books set in the Alastor Cluster , a whirl of 30,000 stars of which 3,000 are inhabited by five trillion humans.

The Alastor Cluster, thirty thousand inhabited worlds ruled by the mysterious Connatic.

Wyst, the planet numbered 1716 in the cluster, appears a utopia, but there is something decidedly strange going on that forces the Connatic to send in an investigator.