The Hand of Zei is a science fiction novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the second book of his Viagens Interplanetarias series and its subseries of stories set on the fictional planet Krishna. The book has a convoluted publication history. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction as a four-part serial in the issues for October, 1950-January 1951. The text was redivided into two parts for its first publication in book form by Avalon Books, appearing as the separate volumes The Search for Zei (1962) and The Hand of Zei (1963). To facilitate the new division, de Camp wrote a new ending for the first and a new beginning for the second to briefly recapitulate the portion of the story already told. The two parts were then reissued together in paperback by Ace Books in 1963, back to back and inverted in relationship to each other, as an "Ace Double". The Ace versions were slightly abridged by the author. The first half of the novel was published in the UK by Compact Books as The Floating Continent in 1966. A restored text bringing both segments back together was finally published by Owlswick Press in 1981. A new paperback edition utilizing this text was issued by Ace Books in August 1982 as part of the standard edition of the Krishna novels, and was reprinted in March 1983. A later paperback edition was issued by Baen Books in March 1990. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. The novel has been translated into Dutch, French, German and Czech. As with all of the "Krishna" novels, the title of The Hand of Zei has a "Z" in it, a practice de Camp claimed to have devised to keep track of them. Short stories in the series do not follow the practice, nor do Viagens Interplanetarias works not set on Krishna. Plot summary Travel writer Dirk Barnevelt and lecturer George Tangaloa, associates of interplanetary explorer and documentarian Igor Shtain, are drafted on Shtain's disappearance to complete his commission to explore the Sargasso Sea-like Sunqar area of Krishna's Banjao Sea — and incidentally to find Shtain, who is suspected to have been kidnapped to Krishna. Arriving on the planet, the Earthmen travel to their goal in disguise as native Krishnans;