Never before has Kurt Rodin, interstellar trader, made spacefall on a planet as remote as Meridian. But after escaping space pirates with his fuel tanks almost empty, he has little option. He must toil in the planet's hazardous trionite mines before he can ever hope to quit this galactic backwater. But the discovery of a conspiracy by the Waloga natives sends him on a different, even more perilous course.
Accompanied by fugitive robot Paulinus, fellow miner Grierson and the intrepid journalist Sula Hahn, he travels to the mysterious northern continent to thwart the Waloga and their schemes. And just when success seems within his grasp, Kurt finds his past coming back to haunt him-when the entire planet comes under attack from space.