Telepath Jeff Vaughan is approached by billionaire tycoon Rabindranath Chandrasakar, who wants him to read the mind of a spacer on an unexplored world on the edge of known space. There's only one problem – the spacer is dead. On Delta Cephei VII, Vaughan finds himself drawn into a web of treachery and deceit in a bid to discover what an alien race is concealing from humanity – a secret that could change forever the course of human expansion through the galaxy.