The Green Odyssey

Alan Green is not exactly a hero. In fact, he likes peace and quiet just as well as the next man. Not that he is really afraid of that crazy, hot-blooded hound dog Alzo, or even of the hound's equally hot-blooded owner, the beautiful Duchess Zuni. After all, on this backward, violent planet a man can manage nicely, providing he is alert twenty-four hours a day. The trouble with Alan is that he's tired  - and homesick. So when he hears of two other downed spacemen from Earth, he hitches a ride with a greedy merchant-captain on a windroller destined to carry him to their spaceship. What he isn't prepared for are the vagaries of the windroller, pirates, the "traveling islands" that devour everything in their path, and the flora and fauna peculiar to this planet. In order to make it to the spaceship alive, it seems that Alan Green may have to be a hero after all.