The 5th novel in the “Lucky Starr” series finds David “Lucky” Starr and his sidekick, John “Bigman” Jones (all 5’2” of him) on a mission to the moons of Jupiter to try and determine how a top-secret experimental technology is being sabotaged and stop it. Even though couched in a young adult science fiction package Asimov, as usual, provides a compelling adventure injected with a fair amount of astronomy and physics education.

At its core, this is a detective story, but it’s also more than that. Here, David Starr, as a Councilman (of the distinguished “Council of Science”) must ingratiate himself with a group of suspicious remote space station crew members, discover the identity of the saboteur, trick a robot, and keep his sidekick under control. No easy task among them. It was nice to see another aspect of Asimov’s “3 Laws of Robotics” in action. This has always been a compelling idea for me, especially when odd situations require unique interpretations of the laws by the robot in question.

This book is also quite dated. To see these space-faring people using punch cards, tape reels, and printers to decipher computer codes is fun for those of us who have lived through the stone age of computer technology but reading it now…well readers will need to forgive Mr. Asimov for not foreseeing the rapidity of such change to come.

All in all, a quick fun read just as the other Lucky Starr books have been.