The Midas Run

They gave him a world. Now he has to bring it home.

It's 2081. Lieutenant Kevin "Kip" Jackson has worn the black of the Republic Marine Corps for three hours when his first leave is cancelled and a nuclear cruiser diverts just to pick him up. The job is rated above secret: far beyond Mars, a tiny asteroid called Midas is a solid kilometer of platinum-group metal - the rarest substance in the solar system - and the Terran Authority has spent thirty years secretly nudging it sunward toward Earth. The Martian Republic intends to get there first.

Kip's orders: land on Midas with nine Marines, set nuclear charges, and ride the rock home to Mars.

What follows is the hardest education a young officer ever got. An enemy cruiser is willing to burn the asteroid clean with its exhaust. The sun is close enough to melt a careless mistake. There's radiation, a frozen wound, a near-mutiny of the heart, and a hard-bitten Navy commander who doesn't like Marines and likes Kip even less. And there's the one lesson his old instructor drilled into him - when everything you were taught stops working, trust your gut - which may be the only thing that gets his people home alive.

A fast, funny, white-knuckle space adventure in the classic tradition, rebuilt for a new generation.