clements@BBNCD.ARPA (07/22/84)
From: Bob Clements <clements@BBNCD.ARPA>
OK, I will give in to some nostalgia, and admit my age. Can anyone
come up with the title and author from the following story fragment?
This was one of the first SF books I read, when I was a wee tad,
probably in the 50's.
About all I remember is that it was of the "Earth (read Yankee)
engineers can do anything" genre. There was this spaceship and a
crew of fighters/galactic galivanters who cobbled up a drive that
traveled to parallel universes out of spare tubes from their whatever.
They were busily inventing weapons, fighting bad guys and univers-
hopping through most of the book. The thing that might make it
possible to pin down the book is that at the end they zip over
to another universe and find out that it is obviously constructed
by a species more wise and powerful than they are. The whole
universe is empty except for one system consisting of a perfect
triangle of stars around one planet (as I recall it, maybe it was
three planets in a triangle around one star). The all powerful folks
who live there gently but firmly push the protagonists out of "their"
universe and are not seen again. The spaceship goes back to its
old ways in its old universes, but with a bit more humility.
Any pointers?
/Rcc
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