This Island Earth (novel)

At Ryberg Instrument Corporation, engineer Cal Meacham has received a quartet of bead-like devices that are meant to replace the condensers that he ordered. Thinking it a joke he tests them anyway and finds that they work just as well as what he had ordered. He orders more and with them gets a catalog filled with electronic apparatus completely unfamiliar to him. His interest piqued, he orders the parts necessary to build what the catalog calls an "interocitor". When he switches on the completed interocitor he is confronted by the appearance on its screen of a man who invites him to join a group called Peace Engineers. Knowing that he would not refuse the group sends a pilotless airplane to pick him up and take him to a small village and factory complex in a valley north of Phoenix, Arizona. He is greeted by Dr. Ruth Adams, a psychologist who seems to be afraid of something. Dr. Warner, the man he spoke with over the interocitor, tells him that he will be in charge of the interocitor assembly plant. He also meets Ole Swenberg, who was his roommate in college. Six months later he meets the Chief Engineer, Mr. Jorgasnovara, who describes the Peace Engineers as a secret society of the world's greatest scientists and engineers, toiling to rationally control the world. Later, he overhears Jorgasnovara's thoughts through the interocitor in his laboratory. One night he and Ruth discover that the interocitors are being shipped out not by truck, but by spaceship. Again overhearing Jorgasnovara's thoughts Cal learns that the Peace Engineers are involved in an intergalactic war. Cal believes that all of Earth should be participating in the war that the Peace Engineers have somehow gotten us into so he gathers documents and samples, takes a small airplane and flies to Washington. Halfway there he and his plane are snatched out of the air by a spaceship and taken to the Moon. There Jorgasnovara tells Cal, Ruth, and Ole that Peace Engineers is actually run by his people, aliens called "the Llanna", and that the Llanna are engaged in a millennia-long intergalactic war with aliens called "the Guarra". Earth is now being used in that war in a similar way to how certain small Pacific islands were used during World War II. Returning to Earth, Cal, Ruth, and Ole find the plant being sabotaged. The Llannans decide to abandon it but before they leave Cal and Ruth discover that Ole is a Guarra sleeper agent. As a consequence of the interocitor-mediated battle that destroys Ole and his non-human henchmen, Jorgasnovara also dies. Cal and Ruth are taken to Jorgasnovara's home world and told that Earth is to be completely abandoned, that the Guarra will destroy it as they have destroyed so many other worlds. Cal protests, but the Llannan Council tells him that their war computers have predicted that they would not defend Earth. But the Guarran war computers would tell the Guarra the same thing so Cal points out to the council that the very best tactic is to do what the Guarra would never expect. The Llannans agree to defend Earth and Cal and Ruth look forward to returning home. ==Title==