He was thirty-two. His name was Jerg Algan. He had done almost nothing except roam the Earth like anyone, without the slightest glory And then one day he had to leave the refuge of men. He landed in the star galaxy - in the most distant fold of space, in this strange place where perhaps the solutions of time-honored problems lay. There were vast black citadels there, like gigantic pawns erected on the squares of an endless chessboard. So Jerg Algan undertook the last phase of his struggle: the gambit of the stars.