Pocketbook edition. In space, to steal air is the cardinal sin. Jim Dorville was one of life's losers, let out of jail only to be ripped off by the shuttle operator taking him home. He and his space station - his personal stinkbucket - set off on a trail of adventure that will lead them to an interplanetary conspiracy where whether a mind is human of cyber falls into insignificance alongside the explosion of cultures that followed civilisation's expansion...