title: Voyage To The Great Attractor: Exploring Intergalactic Space
author: Alan Dressler
description: Dressler, an astronomer on the staff of the Carnegie Institution in Pasadena, Calif., recounts his part in a "big science" project: radio astronomy's search for so-called "large structures" of matter that could account for the gravitational forces holding the universe together. Although Dressler offers an almost diary-level view of the five-year project, he scrupuloulsy incorporates the work of his six colleagues, a scattered working group that dubbed themselves the "Seven Samurai." Their efforts exemplify true-grit 20th-century science: low on romance but high on logistics and management of mountains of ephemeral data spanning great distances and diverse bureaucracies. The survival of the Samurai as a group is a science success story in itself, a bonus tacked on to their controversial findings that "galaxies over a large volume of space are moving, drawn by the force of gravity to a 'Great Attractor.'" Dressler offers a true-to-life portrait of workaday astronomy, from grandiose goals to the human faces of its practitioners. Illustrations. Library of Science and Astronomy Book Club selections. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  The conquest of space had carried man to the
  
  
  rim of our galaxy—and there was nothing left but to step over that rim.
  
  
  Only
  
  
  one man had ever survived a flight into the depths of deep space between the
  
  
  galaxies and he came back with a deranged mind. He said there was something
  out
  
  
  there, something capable of warping a man's souL But he refused, even in the
  face of death, to reveal what it
  
  
  was that he had seen.
  
  
  When Derek Calver,
  
  
  master of the spaceship The
  
  
  Outsider, had
  
  
  heard the story he became obsessed with the desire to discover for himself the
  
  
  secret of intergalactic space. Nothing would stop him—even if it meant
  bargaining
  
  
  his soul for a glimpse of that terrible unknown.
  
  
  
  
  
  Turn this book over for second complete novel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CAST
  
  
  OF CHARACTERS
  
  Derek
  
  
  Calver
  
  
  He was aö excellent
  
  
  navigator until it came to charting a human soul.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sonya
  
  
  Verrill
  
  
  Love in free-fall was her specialty.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jane
  
  
  Calver
  
  
  Space was h