With the news media in a frenzy imagining man-eating aliens, Ben and Lori need all the help they can get. Meanwhile, doing penance for their previous misdeeds, Symch and Goster have a shock in store for their jailers.
Spider technology is licensed for industrial use but at a price, and old foes reappear to do no-one any good but themselves.
Raife and Nancy find their semi-tropical city to be more of a handful than they anticipated with dangers of its own, and their science teams struggle to make progress with the crashed ship left behind by the long-vanished Zetans.