Lionel Fanthorpe is a name completely unknown to Russian science fiction fans. This English writer, the author of more than 120 novels and 350 short stories, was simply unlucky - for all that time, only two of his works were translated and published into Russian: the story “Shadow Man” (1966), signed under the pseudonym Lee Barton, and the novel “Master of the Asteroid” "(1960), included in the collection of Edmond Hamilton and attributed by the compilers of the collection to this author. So. The Asteroid Control Bureau discovers that an “extra” asteroid has appeared in the solar system. To find out what it is, Greg Masterson's squadron is sent, which immediately discovers an asteroid from which strange radiation emanates...