Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids is the second novel in the Lucky Starr series, six juvenile science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov that originally appeared under the pseudonym Paul French. The novel was first published by Doubleday & Company in November 1953. Plot summary 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. Because David "Lucky" Starr harbors a personal dislike of the pirates for their murder of his parents, he has devised a plan whereby the unmanned survey ship Atlas, as soon as the pirates capture it and bring it to their hidden base, will explode. Unknown to anyone, Starr has leaked the plan to the pirates and sneaked aboard the ship, believing an infiltration will be a more efficient way to bring down the pirates. When captured, Starr tells the pirate leader, Captain Anton, that his name is Williams (his alias from David Starr, Space Ranger), and offers to join the pirates; whereupon Anton has Starr fight a duel 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. The asteroid is home to a hermit named Joseph Patrick Hansen, and the pirates leave Starr in Hansen's care. Hansen tells Starr that he purchased the asteroid as a vacation site, and gradually made it more comfortable over the years, but now depends on the pirates for supplies, and later recognizes the pretended "Williams" as Lawrence Starr's son. Starr admits his true identity, and Hansen convinces him to pilot them to Ceres. On Ceres, Starr plans to send his friend Bigman to infiltrate the pirates, but realizes that Hansen's asteroid is not where it should be. Starr and Bigman take their own spaceship Shooting Starr to search for it and eventually land on its surface, where Starr is captured by Dingo, the pirate he beat in the duel. Dingo takes him inside the asteroid, revealing a hyperatomic engine used to move it. A fight with Dingo ends when Starr is struck with a neuronic whip and loses consciousness. Starr wakes to find himself in a spacesuit on the surface of the asteroid; whereupon Dingo straps him to a catapult and flings him into space. He uses his oxygen