Shona Taylor and her family, now increased by one with the birth of her son Alexander, are at last together aboard the Sibyl, fulfilling the dream she and her husband Gershom had of operating the Taylor Traveling Medicine Show and Trading Company.

But Chirwl, the ottle she has been hosting, needs to go home to his planet join his mates. Reluctantly, they accompany him there, to discover that the colony is suffering from a mysterious plague of aging. The human colonists who have established a study settlement there are as mystified as she is. The phenomenon could prove fatal to Shona as well as her alien friends.

"Downright cute...rousing adventure" - Locus