In the free-fall environment of the Smoke Ring, descendants from the crew from the Discipline no longer remember their Globe root base or the existence of Sharls Davis Kendy, the computer-program despot from the ship-until Kendy initiates contact once again.

Fourteen years later on, only Jeffer, the Residents Tree Scientist, knows that Kendy continues to be watching and waiting. Then, when the People Tree people rescue a family group of loggers, they find out for the very first time from the Admiralty, a large society living in free of charge fall amid the floating debris called the Clump. Chances are how the Admiralty has taken care of, intact, Discipline’s first computer collection. Exploration is certainly a temptation neither Jeffer nor Kendy can withstand, and neither Citizens Tree nor Sharls Davis Kendy will ever end up being the same again.

“Niven has produce an idea approximately as far away as one can get…This is certainly classic technology fiction-the idea is actually the hero.”-Asimov’s Technology Fiction Magazine