Inexplicable electro-magnetic disturbances threw the "Avon's" passengers and crew into confusion as their ship was dragged off course. Collision with a huge asteroid seemed inevitable and the "Avon "was abandoned. Ferdin escaped in a life capsule and landed - more dead than alive - on the unexpected planetoid. To his surprise, a powerful pseudo-grav generator and a vast atmosphere and humidity plant simulated terrestrial conditions with uncanny accuracy. The asteroid was inhabited and strangely in-habited at that There was Rosper - a remote, aloof, scientific genius, whose past held strange secrets. There was his beautiful unbelievably innocent daughter, Darmina, who knew no other home but the strange asteroid; and above all there was a creature called Canbail - apparently some strange life-form indigenous to the asteroid A particular gestalt involving Ferdin and many others took place under the calculating supervision of the Leira Mark 2, the most frighteningly potent of Rosper's inventions.