Don Harvey was attending school on Earth when his parents suddenly andurgently called him home to Mars. He had been skeptical about the talk ofinterplanetary war breaking out if Mars and Venus followed through on theirthreats to declare independence from Earth, but he was wrong. War broke out, andhe was stuck on Venus, with no way of getting home.

Then there was thering that an old family friend had given him just before he had left Earth.Shortly afterward, the friend had been questioned by Earth's secret policeand had died--from "heart failure," they claimed. When Earthtroops landed on Venus and started looking for Don and that mysterious ring, herealized that he was trapped in the center of a war between worlds that couldchange the fate of the Solar System forever!