Space travellers drinking heavy water to live longer

[Aston]

Hi,

At least 25 years ago, 35 at most, I read a book about space travellers that drank heavy water (deuterium) in order to live longer which allowed them to travel the long distances between the stars.

I cannot remember anything else about it, don't know author, publisher, whether it was a short story or a book in its own right.

I have searched for hours, page after page of search results, found it was a popular theme with regard to drinking heavy water to live longer but cannot find the story about the space travellers.

Does anybody know the book I am looking for please ?

Thanks,
Aston

 

[CassFrank]

Possibly The Time Masters by Wilson Tucker (1952). Not an exact fit but the drinking of “heavy water” is crucial to plot - aliens do it and so people do it too and it confers longevity and is involved in space travel.

From review: “ the premise of which is that a handful of humanoid aliens crash-landed on Earth ten-thousand years ago, and have been guiding Humanity toward civilisation. The aliens are extraordinarily long-lived, but age on Earth faster than normal because of a lack of ‘Heavy Water’. Thus, some of them, in the 1940s, gravitated to America and Germany when they began to experiment with nuclear power in order to gain access to the water.”

The Time Masters

From outer space...Hurtled to Earth ten thousand years …

www.goodreads.com