"The Vortex Blaster" by E. E. Smith is a collection of three science fiction short stories published in 1960. Set in Smith's Lensman universe, the stories follow Neal "Storm" Cloud, a brilliant nuclear engineer who becomes the only person capable of extinguishing deadly atomic vortices. After tragedy strikes his family, Cloud dedicates himself to traveling across planets, battling these dangerous energy phenomena while encountering alien life forms, criminals, and eventually uncovering the shocking truth behind the vortices' origins. (This is an automatically generated summary.)