The cruise of the space yacht Royal Mother, out from Altair II and back again, had been arranged to kill some sixty years of time. Sixty years on that woman-governed planet-until the matriarch got ready to round out her iron-willed reign by directing the coronation and the formal nuptials of her daughter. Aboard the yacht, however, in the flux of space and time at interstellar speeds, the years had shrunk to days. Jack Williamson was a master of science fiction, and Man Down is Williamson at his best.