The crew of the ship were marooned on a planet with no ship repair facilities, where the well-meaning schemes of social engineers had created a nightmare of battling gangs. They had their own invention with them-an emotional amplifier, which could cause anyone to feel a heightened emotion, but this wasn't useful at first. If they heightened the locals' sense of pride, they took pride in becoming better criminals. So they pretended to be the Royal Legions, sent by a distant star kingdom in pursuit of an all-powerful villain who was hiding on the planet. Things were going better than they could have hoped, and the planet was rapidly becoming civilized . . . and then the real Royal flagship showed up. They thought they were doomed-but instead they were told they had shown just the type of initiative and intelligence that the new arrivals were looking for. So they were inducted into the Interstellar Patrol. And that was just the beginning...

• "Strangers to Paradise" (1966)
• "The Dukes of Desire" (1967)
• "The King's Legions" (1967)
• "A Question of Attitude" (1967)
• "The Royal Road" (1968)
• "The Nitrocellulose Doormat" (1969)
• "Basic" (1969)
• "Test Ultimate" (1969)
• "Compound Interest" (1967)
• "Experts in the Field" (1967)
• "The Hunch" (1961)
• "Star Tiger" (1960)
• "Revolt!" (1958)
• "Stranglehold" (1966)

Vaughan Roberts and his two companions had been trapped on a crime-ridden, chaotic planet until they bamboozled the population with a gigantic hoax - which brought them to the attention of the Interstellar Patrol, who were looking for a few good con men, capable of ingenious improvisation and adept at playing dirty tricks on the bad guys. The new recruits acquitted themselves admirably, so they naturally were given more tough nuts to crack, including: flummoxing an alien empire which has taken a number of human prisoners to gather information prior to an invasion; stopping a plan by not-so-good Samaritans who are pretending to cure a planetary plague - which they introduced to the planet - with a "miracle" drug which creates an addiction to the same drug; and making sure that the rightful heir to a planet's throne escapes from captivity and overthrows the usurper. This time there's a complication: Roberts may be falling for the heir's beautiful sister." And much more, including such lethal alien wildlife as banjo birds with rapier-like beaks, alien caterpillars with flaming dragonlike exhalations, and a cast of thousands of biting, stinging, bloodsucking insects from a host of colony worlds who think humans are the tastiest things they've ever come across.