The Black Star Passes

Robert Arcot

Arcot moves easily between the drafting room and the rooftop lab, prized by aeronautical designers who translate his theories into commercial aircraft. Aboard a San Francisco-bound plane, he and Bob Morey rig a hidden camera and gas-sample bottles, chasing data no one else thought to gather. His restlessness with pure theory and hunger to test it in the field make him the engine of the story's early scientific gambles.

President Arthur Morey

Morey commands the era's fragile global order, yet his closest partnership is with Arcot, whose inventions he helps fund and field-test. Aboard the invisible Solarite above Venus, he hesitates at the switch, then hands it to Arcot, admitting his friend thinks two steps ahead. That blend of institutional power and personal humility makes him the story's bridge between Earth's politics and its first contact with alien war.

Wade

Wade is one of Arcot's inner circle, trusted enough to pilot the Solarite through meteor-strewn space and into Venus's atmosphere. His morning collision with an invisible ceiling shows a man who forgets caution in his eagerness, a trait that resurfaces when he votes to aid one side in an alien battle. His buoyant recklessness keeps the expedition's high-stakes calculations from hardening into cold procedure.

Taj Lamor

Taj Lamor stands in a vast shipyard of dreadnoughts, heir to a civilization that has not known war in untold ages. Tordos Gar warns him that winning means losing, but Lamor has seen the green mountains and blue skies of another world, and he despises the voice of decadence. His choice to lead his people toward conquest, and his willingness to learn from a younger race, sets the moral collision at the heart of the Venus arc.

John Fuller

Fuller consults with Arcot on the theoretical details of aircraft design, and his ability to bring those theories to commercial production has benefited them both. He is the man Arcot wants on hand when the molecular controller is finished, the engineer who can be trusted with a job no one has attempted. His presence in the crew grounds the expedition's wilder physics in the discipline of things that must actually fly.

Dick

Dick is the pilot of the Transcontinental express, a man so bored by routine that he half wishes he had skipped the trip. He yawns, slumps to the floor, and wakes to a plane full of unconscious passengers and nearly a million dollars in negotiable securities. His ordinary fatigue and the eerie silence that follows make him the reader's first guide into a world where even the safest machine can be turned against its crew.