Lucessa, Doella's daughter, is obsessed by her scientific work, so much so her family worry about her preoccupation and lack of social graces. They ask their matriarch Doella to intervene and she agrees to take her Varan to meet her family. Doella of course knows what her daughter is struggling to achieve, and why, and why it is for her to find. The wondrous Black Ship, freed from time and space, takes them to Varan and Doella's family. Here she sees why the Varan rejects her mother and family, The Varan race have followed similar inflexible patterns for many millennia. This is different from her home planet Astras, where no one sees one race as superior. Lucessa meets, the poet Ralse, someone at first glance so unlike her, for on Astras there is little time for art. They find love as she tells him why she must complete her dreams...