The King of Hell

The clue is in the opening sentence but the time is thousands of years ahead. Science has conquered space and men move among galaxies. Technology has also provided every luxury and it would seem that the space freighter is truly returning to Elysium. But mankind has not changed. Beneath the super-civilized veneer the old defects remain. The naive first officer of the freighter is asked by his dying captain to deliver a cassette. In doing so he incurs the wrath of politicians, financiers and the police. Condemned to a penal planet, the circumstances of his escape and inexorable revenge may remind readers of an earlier tale. But to this there are twists, the final one being the certainty that an infinitely variable universe contains a Hell.