The Ultimate Weapon

In his Introduction, Robert Silverberg writes: "I started [this story] in classic pulp mode, opening with my protagonist’s name, showing that he was in big trouble, and providing a setting: “Laird Hammill raced frantically through the cold night of Denerix, largest world of the Shanador system. He was somewhere on a dark, vast plain outside the city of Lombrosa, and a half mile behind him lay the useless hulk of his burned-out landcar.” The story continues that way, slam and bang and biff and pow, displaying my precocious command of pulp formulas right to the curtain line ('We’ve won, darling....') It moves along very nicely, I think. And in its portrayal of a race of intelligent beings that dwell in the hearts of stars I touch on a theme that I would return to, decades later, in my novel Starborne."