E. E. Smith 
The Skylark of Space 

The Skylark of Space by E.E. Smith was written between 1915 and 1921 while Smith was working on his doctorate. Though the original idea for the novel was Smith’s, he co-wrote the first part of the novel with Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of his college classmate and later neighbor Carl Garby. The Skylark of Space is considered to be one of the earliest novels of interstellar travel and the first example of space opera. Originally serialized in 1928 in the magazine Amazing Stories, it was first published in book form in 1946 by the Buffalo Book Co. The novel was followed by several sequels, beginning with Skylark Three. At the beginning of the story, Seaton accidentally discovers a workable space drive in combining pure copper with a newly discovered [fictional] element ‘X’ (suggested to be a stable transactinide element in the platinum group) in solution. Having failed to re-create the effect, Seaton realizes that the missing component is a field generated by Du Quesne’s particle accelerator, and thereafter sets up a business with his millionaire friend, Martin Crane, to build a spaceship. Du Quesne conspires to sabotage Seaton’s spaceship and build his own from Seaton’s plans, which he uses to kidnap Seaton’s fiancée, Dorothy Vaneman, to exchange for the ‘X’. In the resulting fight, Du Quesne’s ship is accidentally set to full acceleration on an uncontrolled trajectory, until the copper ‘power bar’ is exhausted at a vast distance from Earth’s solar system. Using an ‘Object Compass’ that once locked on an object, always points toward that object, Seaton and Crane follow Du Quesne in their own spaceship (the eponymous Skylark) to rescue Dorothy and her fellow-hostage, Margaret ‘Peg’ Spencer, until the Skylark discovers Du Quesne’s ship derelict in orbit around a massive dead star (resembling a cold neutron star).