Citadel of Lost Ships

Outlaw pilot Roy Campbell has the Spaceguard on his tail and a price on his head, and the only people who ever took him in are about to vanish. The Kraylens, a dying tribe of the Venusian swamps, call him their almost-son. Now the Terra-Venusian Coalition plans to drain their marshes for coal and oil and scatter the tribe through the cities as a tourist attraction.

Their one hope is Romany, a hidden world built from derelict ships, where the System's outcast peoples have made a refuge. But Romany is split by civil war, and someone there is selling it out. Campbell slips aboard under a false name and runs straight into Marah, a hook-handed Drylander, and Stella Moore, a rebel with a voice like an angry drum.