A vastly superior alien race boils out of the galactic core, bent on expansion into Human and Sumerian space. Giant sun ships annihilate everything thrown against them.

Only Regent Cordez, of the SouthAm trading block, has any sort of plan to stop the invaders. He ferries in the agile minds of the Mersa, from a previously isolated quarantine planet, and makes contact with the Druani, an ancient and elusive race that inhabits the fringes of the galaxy. Cordez' research teams leap generations in months to find the technology they need, working out of the giant Prometheus base on one of the moons of Neptune.

But still the people of Earth are forced back, until their planet is on fire from end to end, until Prometheus discovers that humanity's ideas about its origins are all wrong. It is the ultimate shock - and the new beginning they need.