When Annia escapes from indentured service with her precious plague research, she flees to the frontier planet Yetfurther with the two clone soldiers who helped her escape their disabled troop transport.
In the unregistered shanty-town of Murrayville, she struggles to build a domestic virus to combat the plague that is preparing to emerge from dormancy in its human hosts, a plague defeated in its last outbreak only by the last resort of firebombing more than a dozen worlds.
Meanwhile, the honest and iconoclastic citizens of Murrayville clash daily with the criminal organization run by Ganymede Solante, and Annia is drawn into the conflict as one of only two doctors in the shantytown, the other being her half-alien neighbor.
Will Annia complete her domestic virus before the plague erupts, or will Murrayville self-destruct, taking Annia and her research with it?
