More from my collection of Ace Doubles:
It was a time of glory and it was a time of fear. After two years, Starventure, the first spaceship to reach the stars beyond our solar system, was returning to Earth and all the world rejoiced. But it was to be a shallow triumph, for on the day Starventure landed, a huge monster appeared in the sky above southern Chile, and the terror that gripped mankind was the worst in the annals of recorded history.
Scientists were convinced that only the crew of the spaceship could unravel the mystery of the apparition. But, when the ship's latches were opened it was discovered that the astronauts had been transformed into six-limbed creatures with twisted and warped bodies--and they knew no more about their fate than the terror stricken people of Earth.
You'd think a story about returning astronauts (in a craft named "Starventure" no less!) would be full of Space Age optimism, but no. Strangely, this is not the first book of this era I've read where aliens have done terrible and inexplicable things to human astronauts. It seems that sixties was as much about "things man was never meant to know" as "boldly going where no man has gone before!"
Andalvar of the planet Argus, king of an interstellar empire, was dead and fear ruled in his absence. The dread of a power struggle between the treacherous Andra, the "Black Witch", and the beautiful Princess Sharla showered panic upon the people and threatened to crumble the starry realm to dust.
But their powers were restricted to the present, and before either could sit on the throne, they would have to come to grips with the man from the future who held the destiny of the universe in his hand.
His name: Kelab the Conjurer--THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER.
It's nice to see that the blurb-writer has used the correct "interstellar empire" rather than "galactic empire", or even worse, "intergalactic empire"!
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