The Peregrine by Poul Anderson 1979 pb Star Ways

Please click on more images to see enlarged photos of the front and back of the book.

The first book in the Psychotechnic League series.

Out at the edge of the known

They called themselves The Nomads.  Unplanned by-products of the chaotic explosion of humankind into space, they had evolved for themselves a way of life similar to that of the gypsies of ancient Earth-except that their gypsy wagons were mighty starships, each a self-contained world that housed a clan of many thousands.  It was a hard life, but the only one the namds knew, or wanted.  But someone, or something, did not want them to have it; one by one the noamd starships were disappearing without a trace-and it fell to Joachim, Captain of the Starship Peregrine, to find out why...