Description: Millennia after the skills of starship rigging have been lost, can Seth Perland find the key to rediscovery, on a world of the mysterious sea people, the Nale'nid?
This was my first novel, following soon after the publication of my first two short stories. The first-written novel of the Star Rigger universe, it is chronologically the last in the future history-and while it is about the quest to rediscover starship rigging, there are no actual star riggers in the story. My second story, "Alien Persuasion," had appeared in Galaxy not long before, and was the first tale set among the star riggers. (It later served as the basis for my second novel, Star Rigger's Way).