Throughout the history of the human race there have been adventurers who must test the limits of exploration, iconoclasts who will never be satisfied with peace at the expense of ignorance. And ignorance will be dangerous indeed if it is true that the Apollyoni exist. In a Galactic Federation without war, it has been hard to imagine evil, until the expedition to Ahriman ended in such horrible violence that its lone survivor--Coni Sanderson--had to be almost completely reconstructed. For Coni's sake, Greg Sheldon wants more than anything to go beyond the perimeter to search out the truth. Richard Highstreet's father was lost on one of the last major expeditions and he, too, would travel anywhere to find out why. Outstanding courage has made Ben Wilson their commander on a desperate and illegal mission through metaspace, and he knows that if Art Cooke, the fourth crewmember of the Odyssey, knew the real reason for the voyage, he would have stopped it. It will be Ben's job to keep them from destroying each other before they reach their destination, because when that destination is reached, they may have more destruction on their hands than any of them could ever have imagined possible.