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The novel deals with the discovery by Eugenia Insignia, an astronomer on the Settlement "Rotor," from the report of a Far Probe, of a distant companion sun, a red dwarf, which is hidden from direct observation by a dust cloud. She tells her superior, Janus Pitt, head of the Department of Exploration and Commerce, about her discovery, and joins him in his proposal to move Rotor, with the aid of hyper-assisted flight (which only Rotor has) to Nemesis so that Rotor can get a head-start on the other Settlements and, using the resources of the star system, build a system of Settlements around Nemesis that is uniform in culture and ecology.
The decision of the Rotorians to move to Nemesis is the action that finally destroys Insignia's marriage to her Earthman husband Crile Fisher, who has been out of place on Rotor. They part, and Crile returns to Earth in spite of the fact that he must part with their 10-month-old baby Marlene.
Orbiting Nemesis the Rotorians find a gas giant five times the mass of Jupiter that they name Megas, and an Earthlike planet orbiting Megas they call Erythro. They put Rotor in orbit around Erythro, more by habit than anything else, and place a dome on Erythro to study it.
Fifteen years later the story begins on Rotor, as Marlene, now fifteen and short, plump, and plain, but also intelligent, is making everyone uncomfortable with her skills at reading body language. Pitt, now Commissioner, is aware that she may be a disturbing influence on Rotor and agrees to her request that she be allowed to visit Erythro, because he knows that a mysterious plague has destroyed the minds of several people who have tried to explore the uninhabited surface, and he hopes it will dispose of Marlene and maybe her mother Insignia. Insignia has discovered that Nemesis is on its way through the solar system and in a few thousand years will pass so close to the Earth that it will destroy all life there. Pitt doesn't want to warn Earth because it will give away their location.
Erythro has no life forms above the prokaryotes necessary to provide oxygen in the atmosphere. No one goes out on the surface, however, because those who do have their minds affected. But Marlene insists on visiting the surface, first in a suit and then without, and suffers no harm. Something speaks to her, eventually mind to mind, and it turns out to be the total network of prokaryotes.
Meanwhile Crile, back on Earth, has been recruited to figure out where Rotor has gone and, after Nemesis has been discovered and its fatal passage through the solar system has been calculated, he is assigned to work toward superluminal travel. His first step is to recruit

 
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