The void is hostile, but not as hostile as the men who profit from it. In the asteroid belt, a cadre of space-weary miners nurtures an audacious dream: to transform a ragged chunk of rock into "Space Oasis" - a new Earth, a haven where humanity might finally escape the greed and hierarchy that poisoned the old one. Their adversary is Norman Haynes, a shipping magnate whose control lines stretch across the solar system like a doom-net, feeding on the labor of those who dig wealth from the asteroids while he reaps the profits. What begins as a struggle for resources becomes something larger: a fight over what humanity's future will look like - whether the stars belong to the few who already hold power, or to the many who dare to reach for something better. Gallun, writing in the early 1940s, captures something essential about that American moment: the tension between frontier optimism and corporate consolidation, between the promise of the void and the reality of those who would monopolize it.
