Halma, a world where humans were ruled by a race of effete and arrogant lords; where a neo-feudal system banned all work by machines; where a mock welfare state rewarded painful hand labor with a pitiful dole. Young Ghyl Tarvok was a rebel. In a pirated spaceship, he began his search through the civilizations of the galaxy, hunting the elusive key to the time-shrouded secret that could free his people. Inexorably he moved toward his last desperate hope: the place his ancestors had left many thousands of years before, the mysterious and terrifying planet called Earth.