Often hired by a secret government agency to do undercover work, Bob Devaney was escorting a mysterious woman named Novak to the White House when they were ambushed by gunmen. Novak used a device like an invisibility field to make an impossible escape - and then knocked Devaney out with some kind of ray-tube. When he woke up, Novak was about to terminate him for knowing too much, but a message arrived from a mysterious individual known as Mr. Inconnu: Devaney was to be recruited for something called the Prometheus Project.

The Project turned out to be the largest disinformation operation in history, targeted at the aliens who ruled the galaxy. Unless the Earth could convince the aliens that the planet had a unified government, armed with technology comparable to that of the galactic rulers, the Earth would be exploited as a primitive protectorate. So far the hoax was working, but someone in the Project was selling secrets to an interstellar mafia called the Tonkuztra about the real state of affairs on Earth. And Devaney knew that Chloe Bryant, the woman he had fallen in love with, was being set up to take a fall for the real traitor.

But matters would turn out to be even more complicated than that - and Devaney would discover the strange relationship between himself and the enigmatic Mr. Inconnu . . .