The epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine will take her and her fifty-strong crew to a planet some thrity light-years distant. But, because the ship will accelerate to close to the spped of light, for those on board subjective time will slow and the journey will be of only a few years' duration. Then a buffeting by an interstellar dustcloud changes everything. The ship's deceleration system is damaged irreperably and soon she is gaining velocity. When she attains light-speed, tau zero itself, the disparity between ship-time and external time becomes almost impossibly great. Eons and galaxies hurtle by, and the crew of the Leonora Christine speeds into the unknown.
A collection of three Flandry tales: THE GAME OF GLORY: Captain Flandry follows a dying man's clues to the watery provincial world of Nyanza, where a rebellion against the Empire may be brewing. A MESSAGE IN SECRET: Flandry ventures to the remote colonial world of Altai, whose human inhabitants haven't been in contact with the Terran Empire for centuries, and discovers that they are cutting a Faustian deal with the Merseians. THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS: Flandry, of his own volition, decides to investigate the remote and isolated world of Unan Besar, to see exactly why it is they have had no contact with the Empire in over 300 years.
Flandry, here a captain, undergoes a series of adventures: He is abducted by the Scothians, an alien race hoping to invade the Terran Empire; rescues the Emperor's kidnapped granddaughter; meets Aycharaych, his nemesis in league with the Merseians; and investigates a previously unencountered alien race that has invaded the distant colonial world of Vixen.