The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

In a bar on the planet Jehovah, a traveling harpist seeks out a scarred man drinking alone and asks him to tell her the story of the January Dancer, a legendary prehuman alien artifact thought to give its owner the power to command others. Her stated purpose is to compose an epic song to convey the story. The scarred man grudgingly agrees to tell what he knows. He begins the story with the discovery of the Dancer, which looks like an unassuming sandstone brick that slowly changes shape, on a desolate and uncharted planet by a down-and-out starship captain named Amos January.

January soon loses the Dancer when he trades it to the Interstellar Cargo Company in exchange for repairs to his ship on the planet New Eirean. The Dancer is then stolen by a band of space pirates, who ravage the planet and disappear into the Rift, an empty area of space between the younger United League of the Periphery and the ancient and powerful Confederacy of Central Worlds. Meanwhile, Hugh O'Carroll, seeking to return to New Eirean and lead a counter-revolution to regain power, teams up with the Fudir, an exiled Terran scalawag who seeks to someday return to an Old Earth he has never seen. Hugh and the Fudir travel under false pretenses with January on his return to New Eirean.

On arrival they discover a devastated New Eirean, and Hugh and the Fudir escape the planet with the help a Confederacy agent named Greystroke and soon join forces with another agent, a Hound of the Ardry named Bridget ban. Both agents are investigating a history of ships disappearing in the Rift. The four share information and agree to form an uneasy partnership to join in Hugh and the Furdir's quest for the Dancer.

As the story unfolds, much is learned about the disappearances of ships in the Rift, the nature of the alien artifact and the men and women who seek to own it—as well as the true identities of the scarred man and the harpist.