On My Shelves: The Cometeers/One Against the Legion/Nowhere Near

Jack Williamson's The Legion of Space was only the first in the Legion series. As I read the Legion stories in a single omnibus edition, Three From the Legion, containing The Legion of Space, The Cometeers, One Against the Legion, and the novella Nowhere Near, I had originally planned to review the omnibus as a single book. However, I found that reviewing The Legion of Space itself was worth a complete entry. Thus, I complete my review of that omnibus in this second entry. There was a fourth Legion novel – Queen of the Legion – which I will probably discuss in a separate entry.

In true space-opera fashion, Williamson raises the stakes and puts the Legion up against an even more terrifying and powerful threat in The Cometeers, when a mysterious alien construct literally millions of miles long, looking like a strange, greenish comet, approaches the Solar System, and strange and disquieting events slowly make it clear that the encroaching alien presence is anything but benign. This becomes an open declaration of war when the "Cometeers" discover and release the most dangerous prisoner in the solar system, a man named Steven Orco, apparently to use him in their bid to conquer or destroy the Legion and Earth entirely. Young Robert Star – son of John and Aladoree from the prior book – is, under the terms of Orco's surrender and imprisonment, unfortunately the only man allowed to execute Orco, and due to a secret event in his past, Robert finds himself unable to do so in time to prevent Orco's jailbreak. Humiliated and afraid that he has a fatal weakness that has doomed humanity, Bob Star finds himself on a desperate mission to catch Orco, enter the mysterious "comet", and find a way to stop the nigh-indestructible rulers of the Cometeers!

To a degree, this story follows a similar course to the first, most particularly the coming-of-age and romance – for one of the most shocking discoveries is that there appear to be human residents of the Comet, one of whom finds a way to reach Bob and his allies – Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu, and the ever-cowardly yet always resourceful Giles Habibula, and that one is of course a beautiful girl with a secret that is vital to saving the solar system.

But there is much more to The Cometeers, especially in Williamson's worldbuilding. The Legion of Space ended with the full reveal of the power of the superweapon AKKA – wiping the Moon and, by implication later, all of Barnard's Star from existence. Once it became clear that the Cometeers were their enemies, the Legion asks Aladoree to destroy it. While she is reluctant to commit genocide without any additional information, she changes her mind upon hearing that "the man called Merrin" has become their target… and then discovers that AKKA does not work.

 

Williamson had recognized that such a powerful weapon needed some counterbalance, for two equally important reasons. First, of course, is the obvious one, that if AKKA has such vast reach and vast power, it becomes really really hard to come up with threats that make sense. The second, something of the flip side of the issue, is that in all history, there are no examples of a weapon remaining secret forever, or even for very long. If there's no way of countering AKKA, soon there will be more people using AKKA, and the physical simplicity of the weapon makes it possible that someone could do so easily, in a fit of pique wiping out cities, moons, even planets.

So in The Cometeers we discover that AKKA relies on a fundamental property of spacetime, twisting things out of reality as though were levering them through space and time. But there is, as they put it, "only one fulcrum". Two or more AKKA users working at the same time cancel each other out. It's implied also that it's possible for someone to concentrate sufficiently on the "fulcrum" to interfere with other users without having to keep their full attention on the matter.

We also learn more about the darker background of the old Purple Empire, and the ways in which they used to break others to their will, and about the advances in technology of the Legion era. Most important of these, and most insidious, is the work of the reclusive genius Eldo Arrynu, who developed superhuman androids – perfect, even beyond-perfect humanoid creatures who were, unfortunately, inhuman in their emotions, sociopaths in the modern context, and Arrynu had no apparent qualms in using them to tempt the wealthy and powerful, and then corrupt or destroy them. These two pieces of background are vital for the resolution of The Cometeers, and their influence continues into the next novel.

I won't spoiler the rest of The Cometeers; it's a grand ride indeed, and the climactic resolution is both emotionally satisfying and well set up, giving our heroes an unambiguous victory from what seemed complete defeat.

One Against the Legion is a somewhat different story, though no less gripping. Chan Derron has just graduated from the Legion Academy with the highest honors, and is selected for a vital duty – security over a top-secret test of a new invention by Dr. Max Eleroid. But something impossible goes wrong, and Dr. Eleroid is found murdered inside the previously sealed test room, his invention gone, his aide murdered… and the only possible suspect being Derron himself. As readers, we know Derron is innocent, but the entire Legion believes him guilty, and he has no way to prove his innocence – especially when, after he has been interrogated brutally and imprisoned, he suddenly finds himself free, with no explanation for how he left or got where he is.

The true villain is an unseen mastermind who calls himself "The Basilisk", leaving a black clay serpent as a calling card. Of course, the Legion believes that Derron is the Basilisk – very convenient for the real villain, since that means the Legion spends its time chasing Derron rather than trying to locate another suspect. Of course, the fact that the Basilisk seems to have an eerie power to transport people and things at will, and even to listen in upon conversations millions of miles distant, makes it difficult to catch him even if the Legion were to suspect that they had the wrong man.

But finally Derron's had enough of running, and decides he's going to take them all on – the Legion and the Basilisk – and prove his innocence or die trying!

 

This is a much more personal story, and Williamson does an excellent job, especially for his era, of painting his character's conflicts and emotional roller-coaster life as he is bounced from safety to peril at the whims of a man who seems to take positive joy in tormenting others from a distance. The old legacy of Eldo Arrynu turns out to have a close connection with the mystery – but not the one people think at first. There is also a clear touch of romance in this novel, but unlike the other two it does not end with obvious wedding bells. Derron's name is cleared, and the girl (whose name would be a terrible spoiler) in question chooses to save his life, but it is not explicitly clear what will happen with them later.

Nowhere Near is yet another type of story. Lars Ulnar – a distant relative of the original "Purple" Ulnars and the Star family – runs the eponymous space station which watches over a strange anomaly in spacetime, an anomaly whose behavior varies in a peculiar and eerie manner. This is a place far removed from the prior settings of the Legion adventures; this is no shining, polished space station with well-trained troops, but a dark, gloomy outpost at the edge of something monstrous; modern readers might find it echoing the Nostromo of Alien or the deserted colony of Aliens. To Nowhere Near come two strange people, a nurse and her older patient, who are unwilling to speak clearly of their true purposes, and perhaps not of their true names. But then the anomaly of Nowhere Near begins to swell, and within the impossible distortion of spacetime… something seems to be trying to emerge.

In some ways, Nowhere Near is the strongest of the four stories, clearly drawing on Williamson's constantly increasing skills with language and character as well as setting and worldbuilding. Williamson expands his universe once more, creating a threat that is deadly, almost Lovecraftian, and yet has a strange element of pathos in it when the full origin and nature of the enemy is exposed. He uses the implications of spacetime distortion to their full extent as well – both disabling AKKA, which relies on control of certain aspects of spacetime, and affecting the very passage of time differently within different sections of the anomaly.

As with the other Legion stories, there is also romance – but this one is a much more complex relationship, as Lars Ulnar at first has no reason to trust the girl in question, and later every reason to believe that an Ulnar such as himself – marooned to a disliked, near-exile station far from anywhere – could never be trusted or accepted by her, since she is (naturally) one of the Star family, a descendant of Aladoree herself and the Keeper of AKKA. Naturally, at the end, this is overcome – but the route there is a hard and painful one. Lars Ulnar is a much more grim and morose hero than the prior ones; even Chan Derron, who spent several years as the universe's chew toy, managed to maintain a more spirited self-image. Lars needs to find himself much more desperately than any of the others.

These three stories together cement the Legion of Space's place as one of the finest space opera series ever written, fully the equal of Doc Smith's Lensman series. For those capable of reading old-style SF, I recommend these wholeheartedly!