Polar City: capital of Hagar, one of a handful of worlds on which the tiny, human-dominated Republic sits, uneasily squeezed between the powerful Interstellar Confederation and the enormous Coreward Alliance.

When a suspected alien spy from the Confederation Embassy is found murdered, a potentially explosive political situation faces Police Chief Bates. And when talented psychic Mulligan is brought to the scene to pick up echoes of the event, what he experiences sends him into amnesiac shock.

Meanwhile, murders continue unabated and a major crisis threatens to destabilise the Republic...