May 23, 2440 A.D. Around Jay Bruce's spaceship, the sky is an impenetrable blanked of opaque gas, typical of this region on Jupiter just north of the Red Spot. Bruce is puzzled. Why has the lovely young woman seated next to him chartered his ship to cruise an uninhabited area? Then it appears...a massive Martian warship unlike any he's ever seen before, forcing him to land—and perhaps to die—in the barren Jovian wilderness!