The story opens in the 25th Century, when a small force of human warships encounter a larger group of Kanga ships 'forty light-months from anywhere in particular'.

The Kanga are a violently xenophobic alien race who have tried and failed to wipe out humanity in a war they are losing, which has lasted over 400 years.

The badly injured human pilot survives her crash landing and is rescued by a passing yacht.

Sometime later Dick revives and finds himself growing younger with his own symbiote in place, as he recovers the President visits and confirms that the Trolls ship was captured intact and he outlines plans to reverse engineer it and create a world government ensuring that this time the Kangas won't get anywhere near Earth, and humanity will be spared five centuries of war.

The President allows the two to slip away into hiding listed as dead in battle, and a few months later the couple are on their new yacht in the Pacific as they await a flash in the night sky, the silent monument to a crew who died centuries from home to save an Earth not their own.

The novel uses many archetypal science fiction themes, including xenophobic aliens, hyper-space and inertia less drives and even very powerful hand held weapons.