dray prescot series by ken bulmer writing as "alan burt akers" #4:
#1: "transit to scorpio" (1972), q.v. for series listing and links.
near-identical editions/printings sharing merkin-printed covers and hence also cat#, near-meaningless daw books collectors number 81,
cover art and six b+w illustrations including frontispiece by tim kirk (credited, artwork signed "kirk")
cover price 95¢
192pp. including titles, indicia etc, end pp. advertising
refer to indicia to see if if carcass of copy held was canadadian- or merkin- printed.
no priority established nor liable to be, both bear full first printing number-string, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
5/1976 3rd printing & (date not yet known) 4th printing indicas still credit tim kirk for cover art, but actually
cover art by josh kirby
b+w interior illustrations by tim kirk retained
cat# UY1231
cover price $1.25
(this will presumably constitute at new bookcat "item".)
these two printings were likely simultaneous
check indicia also to see if carcass of copy held was canadadian- or merkin- printed.
a fictional introduction, "a note on the tapes from rio de janeiro", by ken bulmer as by alan burt akers precedes the novel.
as should be evident from the two numbers differing, the daw collectors number was & is not the cat#:
if you tried ordering daw book 81 by this number alone, you'd either receive a reply of "not known" from daw books' distributor - then new american library - or else the book that was actually cat#ed UQ1081° - not this, which is cat# UQ1085.
not all daw books were assigned "daw collectors number"s; this included some - possibly most(?) - reprints of books originally given them°°; all daw books have cat#s - they had to, to be orderable (until the universal advent & use of isbns, and later, bar-code readers).
° - or UT1081, if the cover price of the mmpb were ¢75 rather than ¢95 - the letter in the cat# after the "U" being n.a.l.'s price code: hence later daw cat#s prefixes slowly changing prefix through UE and UJ and UW
°° - and upon occasion, a reissue of the same book might be allocated a different daw collectors number - "go figure", as good people t'other side o't'pond've been known to ejaculate