Gauger, Rick

Working name of US author Richard C Gauger (1942- ), who began publishing sf with “The Vacuum-Packed Picnic” for Omni in September 1979. His sf novel, Charon’s Ark (1987), intriguingly depicts the hijacking of a 747 full of students, which is taken to Charon, the hollowed-out moon of Pluto, a Macrostructure constructed by Aliens to preserve Earth’s Dinosaurs. Charon turns out to be a World Ship with a dangerously defective Computer, whose function is to carry life across the Galaxy: it needs new crew members. Apparently the first of a proposed trilogy, this was the only volume to appear.