Dev Harmer, reluctant agent of Interstellar Security Solutions, wakes up in a newly cloned host body on the planet Alighieri, ready for action. It's an infenal worl, so close to its sun that its surface is regularly baked to 1000 degrees centigrade, hot enough to turn rock into lava. But deep underground there are networks of tunnels connecting colonies of miners who dig for the precious helium-3 regolith deposits in Alighieri's crust.

Polis+, the AI race who are humankinds great galactic rivals, want to claim te fiery planet's mineral wealth for their oen. All that stands between them and this goal is Dev. But as well as Polis+'s agents, there are giant moleworms to contend with, and a spate of mysterious earthquakes, and th prils of the surface where a man can be burned to cinders if he gets caught unprotcted on the day side...