Marine hovercraft gunner Zack Lynton is pulled from the front lines and granted emergency leave to return to his home planet and settle affairs after the sudden and mysterious death of Marvin Pangbourne, his uncle and sole-remaining relative... Uncle Marv managed to squander most of his late wife's fortune dabbling in antiquities but he does leave Zack the Capri, a somewhat modified, fifty-year-old spaceship. In an effort to salvage something from the financial wreckage his uncle left behind, Zack hires a pilot and heads to the Central Planets intending to sell the ship... He immediately falls headlong into the tangled nest of affairs that led to his uncle's murder. The source of the trouble seems to be an artifact that Marv had recently purchased -- a small, unassuming pyramid supposedly taken from somewhere in the infamous Sol System, one of the most dangerous places in all Human space... On route to the Central Planets, Zack's pilot turns out to be more than just a pilot and he finds out that some extremely ruthless people, including the Soviets and a shadowy, unknown foreign government, are obsessed with Marv's artifact and will stop at nothing to get it... In the meantime, three percent of the human race is having periodic and very disturbing dreams concerning the future of all Mankind. Could Marv's artifact be involved somehow? As matters spin out of control, Zack is ordered to provide protection for an archeological expedition headed into the lawless wasteland of the Sol System in search of the artifact's origin and true purpose...