SYNOPSIS:

Osha, a 132 year old Cherokee who looks like he is 13, boards the Earth-Mars Express with its Captain Quirk, headed to rejoin his old friend Jimmie Memnon on Mars. They are both musicians, and enjoy their reunion in a domed-over artists' community in Hesperia, Mars. Jimmie is restless and wants to build a new technology spacecraft that can traverse the galaxy, not to mention get back and forth between Earth and Mars in days instead of months. He manages to build a Mars crawler using the low-fuel technology of alpha-fission, then dangerously travels alone to the larger domed city of Syrtis, and meets Khlilia, who is also a musician. The couple together go to view the Chasm of Candor, but their vehicle slides down the sandy slopes straight into the citadel oasis lair of the Prince of Candor, a hypno-reptilian who eats humans who cannot play music well. The couple lives through the test and then enjoy Candor's hospitality toward his new pets. Jimmie and Candor together build the new spacecraft, return to visit Earth within a few days, then back to Mars to pick up Osha and explore the galaxy together, visiting ocean-covered planets teeming with seafood and monstrous creatures, planets at an early-mammal stage of evolution, and then Pegasian planets with horse-like vegetarian humanoids and Sirian planets with dog-faced humanoids. Finally they arrive in the region of the Pleiades, where advanced humans live in a more-or-less ideal civilization. Osha decides to stay in this idyllic culture. Although Khlilia has already joined the Pegasians, she soon learns that vegetarianism does not guarantee benevolence, and signals JImmie and Candor, who come rescue her from the fascistic vegetarian Pegasians. however, Candor, though nearly immortal, seems to be killed in a dogfight during the rescue. All along the way the team is rectifying intergalactic relations with the benevolent guidance of the Pleiadians, who bequeath a couple of icy comets to the reunited Jimmie and Khlia, who use the comets to create two oceans on Mars, thus setting in motion the re-greening of the planet. This gives both humans and sapents hope for the future, as they face the reality of a dying Earth. Based on extensive physics, astronomy, and astrobiology research, as well as ancient astro-mythology.