Looking for book: Earth TV star kidnapped by aliens. Earth about to be moved and put in stasis for 1000 years

Question

This is a 60's book. Probably ACE. an Earth TV star fakes launch into orbit as part of his role. He is off on a yacht with a girlfriend. However, he is seen as the most popular person on earth and is kidnapped by aliens. Alien ship appears, sears off the antennae on his yacht and they take him aboard. The aliens look just like us. If I recall, Earth about to be moved and put in stasis for 1000 years. They want him to break the news to Earth. Turns out he figures out that they can move suns instead, so he will become rich.

Answer 1

Troubled Star, a novel by George O. Smith; originally published (probably in a shorter version) in Startling Stories, February 1953, which is available at the Internet Archive; paperback editions by Avalon Books, 1957 and Beacon Books (Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #38), 1959.

Back cover blurb from the Beacon edition:

To the technicians of Marandis, center of a galactic culture, the problem seemed simple enough. A new star route had been discovered through the galaxy, and markers were needed to guide the ships. Three technicians landed on a small planet near a small sun, which had been chosen for such a traffic role. Chat Honger, Bren Fallow and Seyth Radnor soon found that the third planet of this little sun did contain intelligent life. And since making this sun into a three-day variable star would be fatal to life on this planet, measures had to be taken to protect these people.

Contact had to be made with the leader of this world so that the situation could be explained to its people. So Seyth Radnor turned his menslator on earth, and discovered that the man in everyone's mind was Dusty Britton of the Space Patrol.

Unfortunately, Radnor's investigation via menslator was somewhat incomplete. It failed to inform him that Dusty Britton was a TV and movie star. But the surprise awaiting the technicians from Marandis was more than equalled by the surprise awaiting the conceited TV actor, when Dusty Britton encountered Seyth Radnor in his space ship. Here is a novel of a man who found that he had to be what he had been pretending to be. This was one performance he dared not fluff for there would never be a remake.

Dusty's ardent love making on earth with a glamorous movie star and an equally passionate affair with a nurse on Marandis makes a sensational parallel in this fast moving, romantic science fiction novel.

An Earth TV star fakes launch into orbit as part of his role.

The roar that went up was for their beloved hero waving out of the spacelock, not the technician who raced down the ramp, followed by the portly Martin Gramer. The spacelock swung closed as the spaceport jeep, that had been awaiting Gramer, pulled away with dusty and Gramer in the back.

They were a half mile away when the thundering roar came. No one noticed them wending their way through the crowd; every eye on the field was looking upwards, straining to see the spacecraft that was carrying Dusty Britton and The Space Patrol off to new adventures.

He is off on a yacht with a girlfriend.

"Like it, Barbara?"

"Wonderful. So quiet, and sort of clean and peaceful."

"Yeah. Well, here's to the Space Patrol."

Barbara laughed. "What're you supposed to be doing?"

"Darned if I know," he said. "Maybe doing research for The Space Patrol Meets Moby Dick."

"You'd better hope that The Space Patrol doesn't catch you all at sea with me."

Alien ship appears, sears off the antennae on his yacht and they take him aboard.

"Help! Help!" he roared into the mike. "This is Dusty Britton. Calling from the schooner Buccaneer, about a hundred miles southwest of the tip of Baja California. We are attacked by an alien spacecraft! Help! Help! This is . . ."

He let his voice trail away. The output meter had dropped to zero.

Dumbly frightened, filled with a sense of futility, Dusty turned from the dead radio and made his way back to the deck. A man stood in the open spacelock of the gigantic spacecraft with a fluted-barrelled object in his hand; on the schooner's deck, some hot droplets of copper sizzled against the varnish and sent up tiny streamers of whitish smoke. The radio antenna was gone. Only a six-inch stump remained and the end of the stump was blobbed and turned down back against itself; bright-burned copper showed on the blobbed end.

"Please," said Seyth Radnor, "do not be frightened. I am here on a friendly mission."

Earth about to be moved and put in stasis for 1000 years.

"A thousand years, quick?"

"Yes. We put a barytrine field around Earth, and tow the planet to some star similar to Sol. The barytrine field is a sort of time stasis—we don't know all about them yet but we're learning—which will make it seem as though there were a sudden cosmic wink. And as quick as a wink to you, you'll be safe from your variable sun and rotating around a nice stable one."

"With a thousand years out of the middle of our lives."

"You won't notice it."

Turns out he figures out that they can move suns instead, so he will become rich.

Dusty nodded and the little spreckles blinked at his eyes. "I'm just thinking that if you can move a planet away from a star you want to convert into a three-day variable, you might be able to take your barytrine field and slap it around this star here." Dusty pointed to one with a forefinger. "Then you move it aside, and that gives you a long run from this beacon to that beacon—missing Sol by a full inch—er—eight and a third light years."

Gant blinked. Slowly, he said, "Move the star . . ." and let his voice trail away into a mutter. "Move the interfering star . . . he repeated again. "Then . . . My God!"