A nova-bright adventure and the spectacular precursor to the classic Foundation series by a founding father of science fiction. The fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance. High above the planet Florina, the Squires of Sark live in unimaginable wealth and comfort....

Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, despised by the other two hundred million planets of the Empire because its people dare to claim it as the original home of man. And Earth is poor, with great areas of radioactivity ruining much of its soil - so poor that everyone is sentenced to death at the age of sixty. And Joseph Schwartz is sixty-two....

When assassins target his rooms and news arrives that, many light-years away, his father has been murdered, student Biron Farrill flees for his life....