SEPARATED FROM HIS radically altered spacecraft Oscar and his AI companion Tink, outcast Wood McCorkindale finds himself a de facto prisoner of his rescuers, the mysterious Havenners. As part of a standoff agreement, overseen by the fiercely odd young woman Hazel, he’s taken to the planet Haven, where he finds wonders and strangeness beyond his most fevered imaginings.

But Haven isn’t the paradise it sometimes seems to be. Under the autocratic rule of the godlike figure they call the Professor, the Havenners are forced to live secretly, in constant fear of annihilation.

Jo Fox and Olea Hudril, meanwhile, flee the combined might of the Interplanetary Economic Confederation in Jo’s starship: a game of cat and mouse encompassing thousands of cubic light years. But what are Fox’s real motives? Has he been telling her the truth?

Promoted to commodore, Joint State Security Service officer Aral Nikumi once more finds himself in charge of a warship. His mission: nothing less than averting the end of the Interplanetary Economic Confederation and the horrifying deaths of every man, woman and child within it.

Yet, once more, the line between right and wrong becomes blurred. Who are the innocents here? And in seeking to eliminate what seems to be mankind’s deadliest threat, could he be destroying its one remaining chance of salvation?