A lone spaceship captain that has to go to Andromeda

Question

I read this many years ago, possibly 30 years or so. Primary audience as I recall is the more mature sci-fi crowd.

The story is about a lone spaceship captain flying interplanetary cargo hauls in our solarsystem. The setting is one of a slightly decaying society, with the usual problems, trash, pollution etc. There are several planets with mining facilities and colonies, and our intrepid captain tenders to these, in a private business, carrying plutonium and similar stuff. On one of these hauls, he receives a mysterious transmission/message, that instructs him to find a woman and at a given time the two of them and their ship will be sent to Andromeda to start human civilization again, away from their current decay. He actually finds a woman and his ship is sent off to Andromeda, by the same entity that gave him the message in the first place.

The book was a paperback, pocket-sized, and had cover-art depicting the captain sitting in the cockpit of his ship, seen from the outside. The book also had a diagram of his ship inside the covers. The ship looked almost like the front cockpit area of the space shuttle, tacked on to a very wide and flat, rectangular cargo ship. I seem to recall that there was a numbered explanation to different parts of the ship diagram, but not sure. Name of the book is unknown, author is unknown. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

After having looked through a number of books in my local library's online database, I believe that the book is by the Swedish author George Johansson. The first book in the series is called "Uppbrott från Jorden" (Upheaval from Earth) and was released in 1979 and is part 1 of 5 in George Johanssons science fiction series "Universums Öde" ('The Fate of the Universe').

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13504816-uppbrott-fr-n-jorden http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universums_%C3%B6de

I borrowed the book from the library and have re-typed the book and converted it into an ebook (epub format). You can download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u3uxkjwrdyhy47o/UFJ.zip?dl=0

The English translation of the summary roughly states:

"Year 2079 the freight ship Morning Star vanishes without a trace after a dramatic start from Mars. Morning Star is a small, relatively old fashioned freight ship in the BetaMax class. 17 500 tonnes, earth weight. Owner and captain: Len Renberg, Thule, Earth. All attempts to trace and contact the ship fail. Three earth years later, Morning Star is declared officially lost. This is what really happened. The captain, Len Renbergs own story, registered in the ship computer on board Morning Star."

Len Renberg was born in Thule on Greenland in 2046. Earth is desolate, as caused by environmental waste and nuclear war. Thule is, as the rest of our solar system, ruled by a company, Amalgamated. It controlls most things; from details in people's every day life, to instructions concerning breaking uranium on Mars.

Len Renberg has a tough time managing life on earth. And a short message from outer space helps him make a tough decision: he is going to look for a new life in another galaxy - Andromeda.

The plot of the book is set in 2079, when the spaceship Morningstar disappear without a trace after a dramatic start from March. Len Renberg live a comfortable life in Thule - Greenland. When both his father and mother died of lead poisoning, he takes a job at Amalgamated as a pilot.

After some time his uncle dies and he inherits a large sum of money. He buys his own ship and fly away and looking cargoes could be shipped to various planets for a small salary. One day he gets a job of transporting ore milled to Mars. He accepts, but after takeoff from Pluto is a sudden bang and everything goes black.

The summaries for the subsequent books describe him finding a new planet with "Amalthea" and settling it. She is the mystery woman.

Cover image that seems to match your description: