Space Adventures #49

This issue contains two stories. "His Own Kind" features Captain Langley discovering a machine rather than a monster at a glass port on an uncharted planet. "The Key to Life" follows a five-man crew of Earth explorers whose ship crash-lands on a hostile planet where the Kimi race cannot support human life; the crew discovers the planet is inhabited by space pirates led by Waan, who has enslaved 180 humans from a previous attack and forces them to mine metals for building space ships, treating the male prisoners especially harshly by withholding food if they fail to meet work quotas. Captain Langley is revealed to be among the enslaved prisoners, and a woman named Agatha Smith—thought dead for three years—recognizes him and explains their dire circumstances.