Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure

Here’s Carey Rockwell’s fabulous first foray into the future world of the Solar Alliance—featuring the origin story of Tom Corbett and the crew of the rocket ship Polaris, their early days at the Space Academy, and their death-defying encounter on Mars—an encounter that forged three young cadets into adults, lifelong friends, and a legendary team of spacemen.

At Space Academy, cadet Tom Corbett and his pals Roger and Astro are at the top of their class. So whenever there’s an important—and possibly dangerous—mission to be handed out, the crew of the Polaris “sticks out like a hot rocket.” But this time the “Best Unit” in the Academy may be in over their heads. They’ve been placed under the command of Major “Blast-Off” Connel, a legendary spaceman who seems determined to cut the boys down to size. After their ship is refitted for hyperdrive, the crew of the Polaris heads into deep space for Alpha Centauri.

In this adventure, pirates have cracked the security of the Solar Alliance and war has broken out in space. Tom, Roger and Astro are trapped tight in the center of all the action when Tom goes undercover on the pirate leader's spaceship. In their most dangerous and action-packed adventure, yet, the cadets must save the Solar Alliance and themselves.

Tom Corbett, Roger Manning, and the big Venusian Astro have triumphed over the perils of interplanetary pirates, rogue reactors, and hostile environments. But when the Polaris is assigned to lead a “wagon train” of ships to colonize a distant world, the cadets find themselves in a dangerous situation that could finally signal the end of the “best unit” in the Academy.

On term break from Space Academy, Tom Corbett and Roger Manning accompany their pal Astro to his native planet Venus for a well-deserved rest. There the cadets plan to hunt the biggest game in the star system, but their vacation is soon interrupted when the intrepid crew of the Polaris stumble across a secret plot to overthrow the Solar Alliance. Lost in the Venusian Jungle, unable to contact the Solar Guard, separated from their ship and each other, the hunters have now become the hunted.

Why has Roger Manning suddenly gone dark? Can his pal Tom Corbett really be dead? What caused the strange trouble on Titan—and how is it connected to a rocket race in outer space? These are but a few of the mysteries confounding Captain Steve Strong and the big Venusian engineer, Astro, as the Solar Guard races against time to save the mining colony on Saturn’s largest satellite. At stake are the lives of hundreds of men, women and children; the future of the intrepid Polaris crew; and quite possibly the fate of the entire star system.