In this near future book the US is in a race with the Russians to use alien technology scavenged from crashed spaceships to colonize planets outside our solar system. Because they feel that they are in dange of losing this race, men working for the United States government have decided to use a group of volunteers from the Apache tribe as subjects in an experiment without their knowledge. By use of the Redax, the volunteers will be made to think and act as Apaches of the 18th and 19th centuries would respond. It is hoped this would help them better adapt to life on a primative planet. However, the spaceship they are traveling in crashes on the planet of Topaz. Travis Fox escapes with a group of the surviving volunteers. In exploring the planet he learns that they are not the only group on the planet. The Russians using their own version of the Redax have Mongol nomads as their subjects.