The narrator balances duties of governance and military reconstruction after exposing a false deity while he obsessively guards the slow-revolving shaft that imprisons his beloved, uncertain whether she lives. He arranges Helium’s succession by elevating the missing rulers’ kin and remains near the Temple of the Sun as months pass. The action follows covert surveillance, shifting alliances among varied Martian peoples, sporadic skirmishes, and secret intrigues when he trails a resentful former leader to the shore of the Lost Sea of Korus. Accompanied only by his loyal hound, he pursues knowledge of conspiracies and the chance to free the imprisoned woman.