Biron Farrell was young and naïve, but he was growing up fast. A radiation bomb planted in his dorm room changed him from an innocent student at the University of Earth to a marked man, fleeing desperately from an unknown assassin.
While studying art history at New York University, brilliant and beautiful Finn Ryan makes a startling discovery: a Michelangelo drawing of a dissected corpse-supposedly from the artist's near-mythical notebook. But that very night, someone breaks into her apartment-murdering her boyfriend and stealing the sketches she made of the drawing. Fleeing for her life, Finn heads to the address her mother had given her for emergencies, where she finds the enigmatic antiquarian book dealer, Michael Valentine.
Colonel Colin Campbell, alias Dr Richard Ames, 23rd-century writer, traveller and bon viveur, is the hero of this story. Framed for murder, married to the exquisite Gwen, fleeing for his life in the Wild West enterprise zones of the moon, he is pursued by mysterious agents of an unknown power.