"World upon world had been added, each planetary orbit studded with new planets. Planet had been linked to planet until unimaginably vast concentric shells, spinning, stabilized, surrounded the sun. Each shell teemed with the countless billions of humanity. And always unceasingly the work went on..." Out on Mars shell the question had arisen - was there really a central sun or was it just a myth out of the remotest time. To hunt for the sun meant to go through the intervining shells - an expedition that had never been attempted. But there were three who were ready to go: a master assassin, a master illisionist, and a mistress of the erotic arts. To find the sun, to outwit Zeus the planet-sized computer that directed the continual expansion of the Solalr shells, this would be the greatest adventure of half a million years - and the first of several!

Mercury Shell, Venus Shell, Earth, Mars, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn. Each shell concentric, studded with artificial planets, each planet embedded in its shell, spinning like a ball-bearing. The whole Zeus-created in the service of Man but now beyond his control. Now mathematics and space physics, converging, suggested another shell, its existence hidden from Man. A shell of utter darkness, cold and silent where only extreme mutants could survive. To find that shell, the three were journeying again: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry, and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic. together, daring the all-seeing, all-sensing hostility of Zeus.

Smoothly, remorselessly, inhumanly, the controlled flow of people continued. As each of the great planetary shells approached population maximum, the surplus mass of humanity was transported out. Inexorably they filled the space made ready for them by Zeus, the master-minding intelligence. Mars shell, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn, Unanus... But at Uranus shell the flow stopped and the pressure of the countless billions had pushed the shell to the very edge of breakdown. Beyond Unanus lay ready Neptune shell, Zeus-designed, Zeus-built, but no longer Zeus-controlled. Another giant intelligence had usurped all power. And so it was that Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura became the eyes of Zeus as they journeyedd to the place where all systems failed, where chaos and the Tyrant of Hades ruled.

To see the stars. This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn...Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris. Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell. uranus, Neptune, Pluto...The last shell. Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.