One of the oldest dreams of Man, contact with another intelligent species, fulfilled in 2011! But was man ready to accept the opportunity? The New Friends of the Earth, a powerful and activist radical movement dedicated to the husbanding of Earth's resources and especially to the abandonment of the Space frontier was determined that no contact should be made with the Star probe. And it had the muscle to enforce its ban. One man set out to reach the Probe and foil the New Friends - Harold Hentson, space technology millionaire. But it required the utilisation of all the Hentson fortune and the most bizarre of the Hentson family resources - including the mental legacy of Hentson's father and the physical strength of his retarded son - to afford him the possibility of success.