Prince Roger MacClintock, Tertiary Heir towards the Throne of Man, was a spoiled rotten, arrogant, whiny, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt. But that was before an assassination attempt marooned the Royal Brat and his bodyguards on the planet Marduk, and before they had to march half way around the earth, through 120-level temperature and five-hour rainstorms in jungles full of damnbeasts, capetoads, killerpillars, and atul-grak, not to mention hostile peoples, to create their in the past to port.

Under the ideal circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast, and as it happens that, under his petulant outside, Prince Roger is a genuine MacClintock, a scion of the warrior dynasty that created the Empire of Man. Now both Prince and bodyguards are driven to get each other off the earth alive. Of course, the planet offers other ideas.