This story takes place in Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium universe. After a great interstellar war the human colonies lost the technology to travel between the stars. Finally one colony recovers and sets about rebuilding a single human empire, whether the other colonies want to join or not.
King David’s Space ship starts out on Prince Samual’s World. These colonists were able to keep some knowledge of science. When the story starts they are some where between an 1850 to 1900 level of technology. The planet is fractured with several governments jostling for power. The Empire helps King David start to reunite the planet.
One of King David’s spy realizes that Prince Samual’s World will be ruled by those of the empire, unless they can re-develop enough technology to launch a craft into space. By being a “space going” colony they will still be bought into the Empire, but with a higher status and allowed more self government.
One of the Empire’s men let slip that there is a library on a near by star system which might provide the means to build a space ship. But time is tight. They only have a year or two before the planet should be reunified and then bought into the Empire. Our heroes rush off to Makassar to see what they can learn.
Will they make it?
This is a fun story. It reads well. I had trouble putting it down. If you like classic Science Fiction with military battles and intrigues, then give this a book a try.
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