Helping his father on an archeological expedition in the Peruvian Andes, Burl Denning looks forward to studying engineering when he enters college in the fall.

Picked up by the military and taken to California, the Dennings are told that astronomers have detected a dimming of sunlight on Mercury and Mars and suspect it's occurring on the other planets as well.

Fortunately the means to solve the problem stands readily at hand for those who dare to use it – a giant spaceship propelled by an experimental antigravity drive.

Wells described in his 1901 novel First Men in the Moon, the drive on A-G 17 (also called Magellan) is an active device, requiring thermonuclear reactors to provide the necessary power.

Again Burl shuts down the alarm and then the station as the other men on his team take pictures and set a tactical atomic bomb to destroy the place.

Partway to Saturn they encounter a Plutonian ship, a dumbbell shaped, globe-and-rod craft that launches what looks like a lightning bolt at Magellan.

Arriving at Pluto, an Earth-sized world, the Earthmen discover the last Plutonian city at the north pole with two dumbbell ships hovering over it.

Burl and two companions go down to the surface to explore, working their way north and landing their small rocketship several times to examine a dead Plutonian city.

He finds the controls and frees himself, then he joins a ragtag band of Neptunians while Magellan lures the two dumbbell ships out into space where the crew destroys them both.

Inside the temple Burl finds the inner sanctum lined with glass cases containing aliens, including one of his companions, in suspended animation, waiting to be sacrificed.

The book was reviewed by “When the power of the sun becomes noticeably diminished, young Burl Denning and his expedition take off in an anti-gravitational ship to discover the cause and its location.