What is going on? Anthony Stevens is working as a hick town barnstormer; Cleopatra Shakespeare is reading fortunes in a circus; Jochen von Spitzenburg is back making coffee for his social betters in a side street café. Tamora Shakespeare and Vladlena Ilyushina are mixing with criminals, smuggling goods between Earth and Laputa. To cap it all, Elizabeth Ortega is still at large, and working with the complete assistance of Captain Yancy and Commodore Bentley Drummond. Surely this isn't the happy ending everyone worked so hard for - and whose are those spindle-shaped ships dropping out of the dull green skies of the United States of the Zodiac's capital planet?