Most of the action takes place on the planets Imhotep and Daedalus. On Imhotep is the city Olga's Landing, where Diana lives in a deserted old fortress from early colonial days. She is close to the Tigeries, a catlike people.

They are grateful to the Terran Empire for saying their entire population from destruction in a calamity that made their original world unlivable. Olga's Landing is a frontierlike place, with many different kinds of people jostling each other about as they pursue many kinds of business, not all of them legal.

Diana knows her way around the city's underworld and makes her money by guiding visitors to various tourist traps. Daedalus holds most of the secrets she will uncover after she takes up adventuring with Father F. X. Axor, a visitor in search of the remains of an ancient culture that thrived eons in the past. They visit...