James Stone is captured inside the artificial constellation of Evigone. He claims to have come from a planet called Earth and their worlds are copies of his. They suspect he has been created by a more familiar enemy, re-born to start another hundred years of war.

Quagga, a frozen world where ultra-alien scientists created many of the quasi-human species in Evigone. Nobody in their right mind would choose to go there - except a man determined to re-start a war that ended fifty years ago. Allis Ruddoc has lived all life on the Picarel, a small trading ship, where her mother is captain and her two uncles plus their chef and his cat, are crew. Her father was a quasi-human, semi-telepathic, and Allis has inherited his ability. When the ship falls into financial difficulties, her mother takes a job from an archaeologist and explorer, not realising he knows...

Thrown out of Evigone by the Lords of Wuminger, the Tower of Panadawn and its avatars must find a new way to study the life of the artificial constellation. But first they have to get their human colleague back. Dumped in a desert on Earth, James Stone wakes up in a laboratory. In his blood is an alien virus and in his head they've discovered an alien city. Before he can get back to Panadawn, to Evigone and before the scientists drill into his brain, there's the small matter of the US army to evade.