Derai (Dumarest of Terra)
by E. C. Tubb
Category: Fiction

nigmatic man, grim, dressed in gray clothing with a buried metal mesh to protect against the lash of a claw, the rip of thorns, or the thrust of edged weapons. A man with lightning reflexes and carrying a knife he knows how to use. A man prepared to kill unhesitatingly to defend himself and to achieve his goal-to return to Earth. Earth! The planet of his birth, from which he had been forced to flee when little more than a child. A world so ancient that it has passed into legend, its very existence denied, derided, expunged from all stellar almanacs. But how can a man find a myth? Moving outward from the Galactic Center, along a spiral arm of stars, Dumarest moves through a hostile universe. His quest takes him to strange and harsh worlds, as savage as the people who inhabit them. Sometimes he finds friends, sometimes only enemies, and sometimes lush and exotic women who desire him. And everywhere he goes, he is being pursued by an implacable, inhuman enemy-the Cyclan! The Cyclan, with its legion of agents, the Cybers, cold zealots whose emotions have been surgically removed, and who are psychically linked to a gigantic organic computer of a million disembodied brains. The Cyclan seek to exert control over the thousands of inhabited planets, but to do that they must first capture Dumarest, who alone possesses the secret they need. Inhuman monsters looking for a human target. But Dumarest is determined to survive, no matter what the cost. For somewhere in the vastness of the teeming galaxy, he hopes to find the one person who could answer his question. 'Have you ever heard of a planet called Earth?'-and answer 'Yes'!