Wayfarer Inspector Danolarian saw his world's future and did not approve. After that incident, and having once met his future self, the inspector considered himself as knowledgeable as he ever wanted to be on the subject of time travel. What he did not know was that he would be abducted into the future and wind up on the run with a constable who had shape-shifted into a cat. He would also find himself marooned in the ancient past, where he would have to recover his time engine - the device that is his only way to get back home - from five thousand naked, psychopathic horsemen. And when the time engine is finally recovered, a faulty repair plunges him another three million years back in time, to a world of strange, beautiful people living idyllic lives in splendid castles. But things are not always as they seem. After being attacked, he learns from his unlikely rescuer that his travels might not have simply been a series of misadventures through time and space. A furious Danolarian returns to his own time, planning revenge against the time engine's true builders...