Planet Comics #71

When Earth's new satellite proves itself a mixed blessing, Major Joe Vickers discovers that hostile aliens from the dying planet Alturo have infiltrated humanity's space station and seized control of its weapons—using hypnotic gas and a network of imposters to turn Earth's own defenses against it. With the planet under siege and its leaders forced to surrender, Vickers finds himself the last free man on his isolated refueling platform, plotting a dangerous gambit to break the Alturons' grip on civilization.

When Space Rangers Reef Ryan and Flint Baker report to the floating prison city of Bacarat with their leader Borla to collect parolees for transport to Earth, Borla's psychic-analyzer uncovers a shocking discovery: the prisoners aren't who they claim to be. Their investigation leads the Rangers to the mysterious planetoid Arcturus V, home to a strange alien race conducting a sinister body-swap scheme—and a battle of mental powers unlike anything they've faced before.

When an Earth patrol ship recovers a silent castaway from a derelict vessel in 2556, scientists use a thought-reader to unlock his fractured memories—revealing fifty years of Arn Guro's doomed colony on Planetoid X, from its hopeful founding through civil war and societal collapse. As the mystery of the colonists' fate unfolds across decades of struggle, hunger, and ideological conflict, Guro's own desperate journey back to Earth becomes the key to understanding why all contact with the planetoid was lost.

When a desperate slave-ship crew runs afoul of the Interstellar Patrol, they make a dangerous gamble—crash-landing on the mysterious asteroid Alpha-7 to escape destruction. Granted a narrow window to escape the planet's strange Chief Magistrate Ziko, Monk Bronson and his crew seize what they think is their chance at a score, stowing away aboard one of the asteroid's own vessels. But what they discover in the cargo hold transforms their greed into something far more sinister, and they realize too late that some mysteries are meant to stay locked away.