Plague Ship

Imagine a cool spaceship called the Solar Queen where brave space traders buy weird boxes from aliens on a trash planet called Sargasso. But oops! Tiny invisible bugs from the boxes make the crew act crazy when scanners buzz, and big bad space police think they're super sick and trap the ship. The smart crew figures out the bugs are from an old spaceship wreck and not really bad—they team up with friendly aliens, trick the police, and zoom away as heroes proving teamwork beats space bullies!

In Andre Norton's 'Plague Ship,' the crew of the free-trading starship Solar Queen, led by the astute Captain Jellico, ventures to the forsaken junkyard planet Sargasso in search of profitable cargo. Desperate for trade goods amid interstellar economic pressures, young cargo apprentice Dane Thorson negotiates with enigmatic alien natives, acquiring mysterious crates that seem innocuous. However, upon departure, a bizarre 'plague' erupts: crew members suffer convulsions triggered by proximity to advanced scanners, leading to accusations of biological contamination and a ruthless quarantine by the powerful Inter-Solar Patrol and rival corporate interests. Isolated in the void, the Solar Queen's resourceful team— including engineer Rip Shannon and steward Johan Steeves—unravels the truth: the cargo harbors tiny, scanner-sensitive alien lifeforms from an ancient crashed spaceship, not a disease but a misunderstood symbiosis. Facing sabotage, hallucinatory assaults from the creatures, and a desperate bid to contact sympathetic aliens, they employ ingenuity, hydroponic tricks, and interstellar law to expose a conspiracy by bigger traders aiming to crush independent operators. The novel culminates in a tense breakout, affirming the resilience of underdog explorers in a galaxy dominated by bureaucracy and xenophobia.