Everyone seeks paradise. If the explorers of the planets could find a world that answered the description, it could be a holiday world beyond price.

When the HOODED SWAN landed on Pharos, it was indeed all that paradise could be. They came to investigate, they stayed to protect. For unless they played the role of the angel with the flaming sword, very soon this softest and gentlest world of all men's dreams would become another gaudy hellhole of exploitation.

But as Grainger and the crew of the HOODED SWAN were to learn, this world, like the original paradise had a serpent of its own. And the apple of its tree of knowledge might be found too late to save its star-borne invaders... including its would-be defenders.