Tight and square with flat spine - probably unread. Very light overall wear.

The folks of Millville had formed a syndicate to put up the money so a Moon-struck kid they had watched grow up could go up there and try his luck. Chris Jackson found, like most prospectors, that the Moon was no place to get rich quick. It had almost no valuable ores, but one could get by bringing in lichens, which scientists valued for microbes they contained which could not be grown on Earth. The only life-forms found on the Moon were the lichen and "hound dogs" (chunks of living energy? or will-o'-the-wisps) that hung out near the lichen and those who prospected for them. The only place they were found were near Tycho - but Tycho was pure poison and everybody knew it.

The third Lunar expedition went silent in Tycho, as did the rescue expedition. No one who went in ever came out, so people just got in the (healthy) habit of avoiding it. Now Chris finds he has two reasons to go there - he rescues another prospector (Amelia Thompson) who is unlicensed but mad to find relics, salvage, and papers from the previous Expeditions; and then the folks from Millville had hired him out to a scientist (Chandler Brill) who was eager to find the source of the lichen. Getting in is fairly easy - getting out alive was going to be the big problem.

Expanded (?) from magazine version in Amazing October 1960. The first book appearance was half of an Ace Double in 1961. A "single" version came out in the late Seventies.