The Compleat McAndrews

THE BRAIN OF AN EINSTEIN --
THE MIND OF AN ENGINEER

Presenting the space adventures of Arthur Morton McAndrew, space-time expert and scientist extraordinaire, and his long-suffering companion, spaceship skipper Jeanie Roker. Jeanie first met McAndrew on a routine run to Titan and quickly learned he was a genius of the caliber of Newton or Einstein. When McAndrew invented a space drive that let frail humans survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, he disappeared while testing it, and Jeanie had to find him, using a trail of cryptic messages he had left behind.

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, in spite of the gray hairs that Jeanie began accumulating as a result of McAndrew's impractical nature and his talent for getting himself into trouble with much more practical villains, such as ...

A mass-murderer of several million people

A highly-placed government official whose life McAndrew saved,
but in an embarrassing way, and who consequently wants to kill
both him and Jeanie

The ruler of a slower-than-light spaceship that left Earth a long time ago, giving it time to develop some very strange customs by the time McAndrew and Jeanie visited it. And there are still more adventures of this spacegoing odd couple in The Compleat McAndrew.

 

Publisher's Note: Part of this book was previously  published as One Man's Universe.

"Like Arthur C. Clarke and Greg Bear . . . brilliantly balanced seesaw between enormous concept and lifesize characterisation." --The London Times

Paperback

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, April 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-671-57857-X

Copyright © 2000 by Charles Sheffield

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
https://www.baen.com

Typeset by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH

Electronic version by Baen Books
https://www.baen.com

BAEN BOOKS by Charles Sheffield

Between the Strokes of Midnight
The Compleat McAndrew
Convergence
Convergent Series
Transvergence
The Mind Pool
Proteus Combined
Proteus in the Underworld
Borderlands of Science

Acknowledgements

Portions of this work have appeared previously in revised form, as follows:

"Killing Vector," (c) UPD Publications, 1978
"Moment of Inertia," (c) Davis Publications, 1980
"All the Colors of the Vacuum," (c) Davis Publications, 1981
"The Manna Hunt," (c) Davis Publications, 1982
"Rogue World," (c) Mercury Press, 1983
"Shadow World (The Hidden Matter of McAndrew)," (c) Davis Publications, 1992
"The Invariants of Nature," (c) Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1993
"Out of Focus," (c) Charles Sheffield, 1999 (first appeared in SF Age)
"The Fifth Commandment," (c) Charles Sheffield,1999 (first appeared in Analog)

CONTENTS

Introduction:  0

First Chronicle: 1
Killing Vector

Second Chronicle:
Moment of Inertia 2

Third Chronicle:
All the Colors of the Vacuum 3

Fourth Chronicle: 4
The Manna Hunt

Fifth Chronicle: 5
The Hidden Matter of McAndrew

Sixth Chronicle: 6
The Invariants of Nature

Seventh Chronicle: 7
Rogueworld

Eighth Chronicle: 8
With McAndrew, Out of Focus

Ninth Chronicle: 9
McAndrew and The Fifth Commandment

Appendix: 10
Science & Science Fiction