What's a hundred thousand years more or less to the universe? To ex-private Bernhard breaking rocks on a prison planet, every day felt like eternity. To the myriads of people, robots, and self thinking servo-mechanisms aboard the twenty thousand mile long spaceship Refanut, it seemed like just another day on their endless trip. But when Bernhard escaped to the Refanut, things changed sharply. For all the machinery on the fabulous starship—pride of a long forgotten galactic empire—had been accidentally programmed to adore Bernhard—and all its people would just as gladly cut his throat.