Far, far in the future Earth has achieved real peace and is sending out interstellar expeditions, not to conquer, but to explore. The third such expedition, has made it to the Vega system and discovered to everyone's amazement, not only a solar system but two worlds circling the Vega sun that seem to have atmosphere and water. And apparently intelligent life is there as well as well because something tries, and almost succeeds, in blasting the expedition ship out of space before it can even get close to either one...

In this short novel the narrator is a superintendent on the K. & A. railroad, sometime in the late nineteenth century. The train is robbed somewhere in the Arizona desert. Various adventures involve this young superintendent. Romance is provided by a comely passenger.

Formula of Concord (1577) is an authoritative Lutheran statement of faith (called a confession, creed, or "symbol") that, in its two parts (Epitome and Solid Declaration), makes up the final section of the Lutheran Corpus Doctrinae or Body of Doctrine, known as the Book of Concord. The Epitome is a brief and concise presentation of the Formula's twelve articles.

Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson was the aunt of Winston Spencer Churchill. In 1899 she became the first woman war correspondent when she was recruited to cover the Siege of Mafeking for the Daily Mail during the Boer War. She moved to Mafeking with her husband at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Colonel Robert Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison. This she duly did, and set off on a...