The greenhouse effect hits the Earth causing cities and islands to disappear and the weather to go crazy. Dan Randolph and Martin Humphries are rival industrialists. Dan Randolph wants to help earth by mining the asteroid belt and moving heavy industry into space to give earth a chance to recover. Martin Humphries is the ultimate evil industrialist who takes what he wants without caring about the consequences and is not interested in helping earth. He lives on Selene, the moon settlement and has no plans on returning to Earth. Randolph believes that the key to earth’s survival is to mine the asteroid belt and move earth’s heavy industry to space. Humphries will take advantage of this if he can get power over another industry, mining the belt. We meet Pancho Lane, a pilot who works for Dan Randolph. Randolph is on the edge of bankruptcy because he has sunk so much money in developing a fusion drive. Pancho pilots the first fusion ship, making getting to and from the asteroid belt fast enough to be financially feasible. Despite all the efforts by Humphries to stop the first flight, Pancho, her copilot Amanda (who Humphries wants), a planetary geologist Lars Fuchs, and Dan Randolph make it to the belt, even though Humphries had caused the ship to fail. The four on the ship make it back to Selene, but Randolph dies because of radiation but first makes Pancho his successor on the board of Astro Corporation, leading to the continuing battle between Astro and Humphries’ company.

Amanda has married Lars Fuchs, mostly to get away from Humphries, but learns to love him. They end up as miners in the asteroid belt, as does George Ambrose who had been Randolph’s body guard. They decide to set up a colony on Ceres, one of the asteroids so the “rock rats” wouldn’t have to go so far for supplies. Fuchs goes into business on Ceres providing supplies and buying ore. Both Astro and Humphries get into the supply business, but Humphries hires mercenaries to harass the rock rats and Fuchs, hoping to force Fuchs into bankruptcy so Humphries can have Amanda. War erupts in the belt and Fuchs ends up on the run, trying to take out Humphries’ ships and depots. Amanda gets a guarantee from Humphries of Fuch’s life if she marries him. NOT a good idea.

The book begins with the first part of Humphries’ visit to an asteroid containing an alien artifact that is being protected by the former Dorik Harbin and the book ends with the last part of his visit. The main story is told between the two parts of the visit. The asteroid belt war continues with little interest on the part of people on Earth until a major massacre makes big news. We get to know the main mercenary hired by Humphries, Dorik Harbin, better. We learn that the Yamagata Corporation has been playing Humphries against Astro in order to gain control of the solar system mining operations. At the end of the book Fuchs is still going strong despite Humphries and Harbin going after him.

This story begins with Dorik Harbin just after having destroyed the Chrysallis habitat when he attacks the ore hauling ship Syracuse inhabited by Victor Zacharias, his wife Pauline, and two children, Theo and Angela. To save his family Victor separates the control pod from the main ship to draw Harbin away from his family. It works, but it leaves his wife and teen-aged children in a badly damaged ship with only the backup control. Much of the book deals with the growing up of the two children during their four-year return to Ceres. In the meantime Victor is finally rescued in the nick of time by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He makes it back to Ceres but must help rebuild Chrysallis before getting a ship to rescue his family. Humphries is still determined to get rid of Harbin (now Dorn) and the sculptress Elverda Apacheta who had seen his bad reaction to the artifact and he sends another mercenary, Kao Yuan, to find and kill them. Dorn and Elverda, in the meantime, are in the process of giving proper burial to every corpse floating in space that he had helped to kill. Tamara Vishinsky, Martin Humphries’ assistant, is involved also, trying to take power away from Humphries. The Syracuse is found by scavengers led by Valker, with rape in mind, but the boy Victor gets help from Dorn at the last minute (how fortuitous!). All quite exciting. Some satisfying tying up of loose ends also.