She is trying to elude planetary law enforcement agencies, almost bankrupt and about to lose her sole asset and her best friend, her starship "Alice Liddell".

Unexpectedly, millionaire entertainer and entrepreneur Marco Metz arrives at her hideout and promises remuneration if she takes him to the distant giant spaceship Plenty, as well as his band.

He is actually the estranged father of two of the other band members, who appear to be in an incestuous relationship and has also engaged Jute under false pretenses, intending to steal the Frasque, an alien artefact.

En route, they become entangled with the Capellans, an advanced alien species who have confined humanity to the Solar System and prohibited interstellar travel .

Moorcock stated that the novel was "intelligent, literate space opera" in the tradition of The Stars My Destination, The Paradox Men by Charles L. Harness and Nova.