Out of Africa comes a dead man walking upon the water - a portent of the political adventures into which j Knowle Noland, ex-convict, ex-travellerand captain of the 80,000-ton freighter Trieste Star, is about to tumble headlong.
Choked, disease-ridden towns, robots and prison gangs tending the bare, poisond renched countryside are all characteristic of Knowle's world; only in Africais the soil still fertile and the people still relatively vital. On the coast of Africa, near Walvis Bay, Knowle runs his freighter aground; and there he meets Justine and the destructive destiny that purges him of guilt and frees him from hallucination.