Roy Campbell has spent years running from the Solar Guard, a man with a price on his head and nothing left to lose. When his ship crashes on Venus, he stumbles into the world of the Kraylens, a dying tribe clinging to their freedom in a solar system that has no room for independent cultures. Brackett renders Venus as a sweltering, primeval nightmare, the air thick with moisture, the swamps teeming with danger, the nights alive with the pulse of ancient drums. Campbell could leave. He could take his chances alone again, the way he always has. But the Kraylens gave him shelter when they had every reason to fear a stranger, and now the machinery of empire is bearing down on their last refuge. This is space opera with a conscience, written in 1943 when the language of expansion and domination was very much in the air. The novel asks what freedom means when you're the last of your kind, and whether one man can matter against the crushing weight of history.
