Again, old favorite. Sequel to Subspace Explorers; this one focuses less on politics (at least, our-space politics!) and much more on the psychic thing. Including Smith's common trope of a hidden, super-powerful entity controlling people and events secretly and thoroughly (boring!). So after the political fallout of the last book, it was decided that psychic power was extremely important and everyone who had any should be trained in it. Many more people than expected showed up with talents - all the high-powered people we met in the first book, and a good many more. And meanwhile Our Heroes (now six, and expanding to eight later in the book) are a) finding metal and b) trying to figure out what destroyed their ship in the first book. And then we go to an entirely different group of people - in Second Space (as it will get called later); a completely human people with a really weird civilization, much more violent and savage than any contemporary Terran one. It turns out (with a lot of hints and assists from the Operator (see: hidden, super-powerful entity)) that the "zeta storms/X storms" are caused by Terran-side ships slipping over into Second Space and breaking things. So of course Our Heroes go there, and after some misunderstandings make friends. The fact that Second Space is in the process of dealing with an attempted coup complicates things... One interesting bit - the coup-ers are a red-brown, arrogant, intolerant race. At one point one of the Terrans makes a weak (identified as weak in the story) joke about cowboys and Indians - and when she's scolded, says "They don't look like Indians anyway". I wonder if Smith had a beta reader who got antsy about the Garshans (the bad guys) "looking" like Native Americans to his/her mind's eye, and he put in this scene to deflect that? You don't think about that sort of sensitivity then... hmmm. Actually, this is Smith's book, but extensively edited in the 1980s when it was re-found and finally published. Maybe that scene got added then. It fits in fine with the story, the meta just feels a little odd. It's been a lot of years since I read the Subspace books, but I still enjoy them. They're pure space opera and don't think too hard about the joins, but for a quick fun read they've still got it (for me). ( )