Pandora’s world is split in two. Raja Flatery’s dictatorial regime—the all-Pandora chaplain-psychiatrist—is opposed by a secret organization of people dedicated to the revival of kelp: a thinking aquatic substance that calls itself Aavaat. The regime’s opponents don’t know that the dictator’s goal is to leave their hostile world, abandoning its population to fate. To achieve that, Flatery spares neither strength nor resources for the grand project of building a new deep-space vessel—a prototype of which was “The Earthman,” the ship that brought the first people to Pandora and declared itself a deity.