No good deed goes unpunished... Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned — but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous.

Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped.

But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango — and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.

And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres.

By A.D. 2110, nearly 100,000 humans had fled the civilized strictures of the Galactic Milieu for the freedom they thought existed at the end of the one-way time tunnel to Earth, six million B.C.

But all of them had fallen into the hands of the Tanu, a humanoid race who'd fled their own galaxy to avoid punishment for their barbarous ways. And now, the humans had made the Tanu stronger than the Firvulag, their degenerate brethren and ritual antagonists. Soon the Tanu would reign supreme. Or so they thought...

In this second installment of the Saga of the Pliocene Exile, a small group journeys through a time-gate into Europe's prehistoric past. Yet this supposedly unspoilt sanctuary holds two alien races locked in combat. In a world where the human-like Tanu have the upper hand, Elizabeth Orme soon encounters trouble. When they find she possesses rare mind powers, they want her for their own. She won’t be used as a pawn in a Tanu versus Firvulag war, but Aiken Drum can’t wait to get involved.

Aiken discovers the Tanu’s mind-enhancing torcs have given him his own powerful abilities. And it’s not long before he devises a plan to challenge the Tanu’s leader – for rule of the Many-Coloured Land itself. But another faction seeks the slaughter of all humans, and he stands in their path.