The Legionnaire's Helmet

Mankind of the distant future has leaped the ragged fence of the solar system. He expands his empire not along the shores of continents but among the stars. Significant rewards . . . including large sums of money . . . go to the skillful mercenaries, called searchers, who pursue the new worlds scattered over the Milky Way. One of them, the elusive Rene Cantona, has just returned with a discovery that, in an instant, becomes the World Council's top priority. The planet Tethys is an unsettlingly perfect paradise. Not surprisingly it's inhabited, but the population of this little world is . . . human. The Dorigians have neither enemy nor disease to confront, but strangely they exist in a medieval age, complete with masquerades and jousting. Does the warm embrace of the Tethysian climate hold them there, or is something else at work? Thus the Council has established a mission to present humanity to the Royal Court as the ancestral home of the Dorigian civilization, and they must be convinced to accept it. The question is whether the searchers will receive the same gracious accord given the first visitor or be seen as emissaries of one called . . . the Demon. The minutes swing past like the blade on a torturer's pendulum. The murder of a royal is the least of their problems. Hidden somewhere is a device that could destroy the Dorigian people and alter the destinies of two planets. The Legionnaire's Helmet is a colorful tapestry of time and place, where the rituals of legend disguise a diabolical plot. Follow the clues of motive and identity in this captivating novel from the novelist Valery Milgrom.