Russian Fairy Tales

The Russian space empire marked the three-hundredth sad anniversary of the execution of the imperial Romanov family. The planet Golueya went through a similar historical path: long ago, a world war also erupted there, in which most major states took part; and in one of them, a revolution occurred— the ruling dynasty was overthrown, and an ill-fated attempt to establish a “just” republic ended in failure. Since then, for several centuries, power on the planet has been in the hands of tyrants. There are also reports that the Golueyans created a “hyperbomb” using the most advanced technologies. And that threatens the safety of the entire inhabited universe.

Special agent of the American Federation, Iven Kruyff, and Russian staff-major Ivan R. Golitsyn land on Golueya—but they end up in its distant past, in the era of the first mechanical means of transportation, airships, and the rising civil war…