David Starr, Space Ranger (Lucky Starr, #1)

From back cover Signet paperback December 1971: **planet in turmoil!** The Solar System had long ago been colonized by an Earth suffering from a dwindling food supply and a millionfold increase in population. The colonies were her very lifeblood. Without the daily flow of products from them, Earth would experience mass starvation and chaos within weeks. Suddenly and unexpectedly, reports of fatal food poisoning, traceable to Martian produce, began to reach the ruling Council of Science. Each new case was treated with intense secrecy for it the people of Earth learned the cause of these deaths, a worldwide panic would surely ensue. To David Starr, Space Ranger, these deadly incidents formed a terrifying pattern -- they were clearly part of a clever and brutal scheme by an alien conspiracy to cripple Earth's economic life and topple its government! David Starr, Space Ranger, is set around A.D. 7,000 (five thousand years after the first nuclear bomb, as stated at the beginning), when humanity has founded colonies on the inner planets of the Solar System, as well as spreading to other planetary systems with separate and sometimes hostile governments. The most powerful organization in the Solar System is the Council of Science, which uses scientific expertise and intrepid field agents to counter political and military threats to Earth's government. Protagonist David Starr is a young biophysicist orphaned as an infant and raised by his guardians, Augustus Henree and Hector Conway, high-ranking Council members who send David on his missions for the Council. They tell him of some 200 recent victims fatally poisoned by produce imported from Mars. Fearing a conspiracy to start a food panic and wreck interplanetary trade, they send Starr undercover to Mars. David's first mission as a member of the Council of Science is to stop the random poisonings on Earth. People depend on food from Mars and if word leaks out that the food could be lethal, panic will follow