Extra stamps on first endpaper, title page, top-side-bottom page blocks (these are lighter.) Book is very tight and square - possibly unread. Age tanning is negligible - pages are a very light cream; no marks or writing. Missing first right endpaper. Dustjacket is clipped on first flap - see scans.

Plague Ship: second in Norton's "Solar Queen" series (hardcover was in 1956 - as by "Andrew North.") Since I think the blurb is a little vague about the plot/set-up, I'm quoting from a review by my favorite reviewer:

...This, for my money, is the pure romance of strange places that Sam Moskowitz and others - including myself - have been lamenting as lost from present day SF. We open with Free Traders feeling their way into ticklish negotiations with a strange race, on a strange world, that you're made to feel is strange in every detail. Young Thorsen blunders into one success, which is almost offset by complete failure - then at the very moment when they seem to have their fortunes made, a mysterious illness strikes down member after member of the crew of the trader Solar Queen, until only the four junior members of the crew are left to bring her back to Earth. Mystery compound on mystery: why does that grand character, Sinbad the ship's cat, refuse to go near the hydroponics room? What is the meaning of the 'strange behavior of a hoobat?" What is the secret of the Big Burn? Recommended for teen-agers and for anyone else who doesn't demand social significance in his SF, and likes to be taken back those easy days when worlds were still strange to us all. [-P. Schuyler Miller, in Astounding October, 1956.]