The world of Nulaperion has evolved in self-imposed isolation from the rest of Terran-based civilization for centuries. It is a world populated by millions, living in vast, labyrinthine underground cities carved out of the planet's bedrock, in strata created and maintained by extraordinary organic technologies. It is a world where society too is rigidly stratified and hierarchical - the majority living lives of near-medieval deprivation, hardship and cruelty in the lower strata, denied such fundamental rights and liberties as free speech and ruled over by the seemingly omnipotent Logic Lords and Oracles- supra-human beings who, through their ability to truecast, predict the future and so determine the fate of the people and maintain the status quo. But what the Oracles failed to foresee was the chance encounter between one of the mythic Pilots and young Tom Corcorigan, the son of a craftsman from the lower levels. As the doomed Pilot flees the murderous attention of the authoritarian proctors, she passes a small info-crystal to Tom, one that holds the key to mu-space and a very different destiny for Nulaperion and its oppressed peoples. In accepting the crystal, Tom takes the fi