Written as a sequel to Son of the Stars, the story follows Ron Barron and his family as they are taken to a planet in the Great Galaxy of Andromeda to participate in a meeting of an intergalactic analogue of the United Nations.

This is one of the thirty-five juvenile novels that comprise the Winston Science Fiction set, which were published in the 1950s for a readership of teen-aged boys.

The typical protagonist in these books, like Ron Barron, was a boy in his late teens who was proficient in the art of electronics, a hobby that was easily available to the readers.

When he was rescued by his own people at the end of Son of the Stars, the alien boy Clonar left behind his wrecked spaceship’s IVP hyperwave radio.

Ron and Clonar join the crew of a Rorlan interstellar Patrol ship to go in pursuit of the desperadoes to a poisonous hellworld, from which the Patrolmen bring Barmese back to Rorla for trial.