Back to Mars! At long last - after four years of interplanetary study on Earth - Nelson Parr stepped aboard the Mars-bound space liner that was to carry him to his home planet. By the year 2120, Earth had established a colony on Mars and had explored the land - originally inhabited by Martians, a weird yet intelligent people...a vanished race. But when Nelse discovered the trhee-fingered handprint in his cabin, he couldn't help but wonder whether the intruder might have been Martian. Could it be that the Martians still lived?
The teen-ager reached Mars to hear disheartening news - the inhabitants of the red planet were ordered to return to Earth. But Nelse, his father and four other scientists disobeyed. They rocketed to Phobos, a satellite of Mars, where they set up their equipment to observe phenomena of the red planet...unaware that they, too, were being observed! When, through the telescope, they sighted strange events, it was decided that Nelse and a companion should take up a post on the other satellite, Deimos.
"Crash-landing" into a realm of space-tense adventure, Nelse - his companion murdered by outer-world beings - came to grips with the mysterious forces of space, alone. Capture, escape and capture follow one another in a dizzying spiral of desperate events to this book's hair-raising climax.
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This was not a synopsis as much as it was a promotion for the book. If you don't mind spoilers read on and I'll tell you how the story turns out. The original martian race were identical to Earth people. To prevent cultural stagnation they would periodically put their entire population aboard sub-light starships and go exploring. Human nature being what it is, they sometimes got into fights with the other races that they made contact with. By an amazing coincidence, refugees from one of these conflicts ended up in our solar system and their camouflaged starships were mistaken by Earth people as the moons of mars. A timid species, these aliens were afraid to make contact with Earth and wouldn't even colonize the vacant Mars until they were sure that Earth was abandoning it. The aliens split into two factions with the most extreme cowards inside Deimos and the more adventurous inside Phobos. Events escalate when the Martian spacefleet returns. Because of relativity, the Martians have only been gone for a few years from their perspective while centuries have elapsed in the Solar system. Not realizing that this is the home system of the star fleet, the aliens tell Humanity that this is the armada of evil invaders who drove them from their home planet. Earth prepares for war with the Phobos aliens as allies while the Deimos aliens flee the Solar system. Tragedy is averted by Nelse Parr who has learned the facts of the situation and convinces Earth that the Martians are our long lost neighbors and kin. The only real losers are the murderous cowards of Deimos who will spend the rest of eternity running from an enemy who isn't even chasing them.
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