Also titled The Ten Books, it is about a new society on a distant Earth-like planet founded by the inhabitants of a huge intergalactic spaceship of colonists which crash-landed there.
Two space explorers, Betty and Ralph Welstead, are flying to asteroids to prospect for minerals using a spaceship with a sophisticated drive-propulsion system.
They live in “wide low cities, very different from the clanging hives of Earth”, all “under the greenery like carvings in alabaster or miraculous snowflakes”.
Ralph tries to convince the colonists that Earth is actually struggling with graft and government inefficiency, and that the commercial art and music typically is of mediocre quality.
Ralph thinks that he and Betty should sneak off the planet before the curious Havenites can find out about the drive system, because he worries they will feel sad when they see the real Earth.