A dead man is walking on the water - a sign of the political adventures into which Knowle Noland, ex-convict, ex-traveller and captain of the freighter Trieste Star, is about to stumble headlong. Knowles's world is one of choked, disease-ridden towns, robots and prison gangs tending the bare, poison drenched countryside. Ecology has become a meaningless word from the past. Only in Africa is the soil still fertile and the people still relatively vital. On the coast of Africa, Knowle runs his freighter aground; and there he meets Justine and the destructive destiny that purges him of guilt and frees him from hallucination.