By dint of her unprecedented genius, three centuries' hard work, and many massive expenditures, polymath Althea Morelon, scion of the foremost family of Hope, has cracked the secret of superluminal travel. Her adventurer's spirit has her eager to explore the space around Hope before heading off to Earth, the origin planet of Mankind, to discover what has become of the cradle from which Hope's denizens escaped more than fifteen hundred years before.

Althea isn't just an adventurer. She's a proper scientist: without preconceptions and humble before the data. She knows not to expect any particular thing. She'll see what's before her eyes and what her ship's sensors record. When she's returned home to Hope, she'll report on what she's seen. What she's about to see is a species of cruelty and tyranny unknown to Earth-derived Mankind...and its perpetrators have it in mind to use her as their instrument for extending their reign across the reaches of interstellar space.