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A year has passed since the events in David Starr, Space Ranger. In that time the spaceship TSS Waltham Zachary has been taken and gutted by pirates based in the asteroid belt, and David "Lucky" Starr has come up with a plan to deal with them. The Council of Science has announced a project to thoroughly survey the asteroids, and the Atlas will be the first ship to conduct that survey. The Atlas, however, is a trap: it is unmanned, and as soon as the pirates capture it and bring it to their hidden asteroid base, it will explode. But Starr has a hidden motive for suggesting the Atlas project: twenty-five years earlier, space pirates attacked his father's ship, and both of Starr's parents were killed. Now, the pirates of the asteroids are back, and Starr intends to confront them in person. He sneaks aboard the Atlas just before it lifts off from the Moon.
When the pirates (in a Sirian-designed ship) capture the Atlas, though, it is clear to Starr that they expected it to be deserted. He tells the pirate leader, Captain Anton, that his name is Williams (his alias from David Starr, Space Ranger), and that he wants to become a "man of the asteroids" (as the pirates call themselves). Anton has Starr fight a duel with one of his men in open space to prove himself worthy. Starr wins the duel, but remains a prisoner aboard Atlas while it is brought to an anonymous asteroid. One of the pirates guarding Starr warns him that he has made an enemy for life of Dingo, the pirate he beat in the duel.
The asteroid is home to a hermit named Joseph Patrick Hansen, and the pirates leave Starr, who still calls himself Williams, in Hansen's care. He tells Starr that he originally purchased the asteroid as a vacation spot, and gradually made it more comfortable over the years. When the pirates appeared, he was cut off from Earth, and now he depends on the pirates for supplies. When Starr becomes angry at one point, Hansen suddenly recognizes him as Lawrence Starr's son. Starr admits his true identity, and Hansen convinces him to pilot them to Ceres in Hansen's ship.
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