The crew returns from a Commerce Planet with a load of Crackers and a meek alien called Traltixx, who promises he can alter Moya’s electromagnetics to make her untraceable. Crichton is skeptical; it seems too good to be true. As they pass through a constellation of pulsars, an intense paranoia affects the crew, turning them violently again each other. Crichton must fight against his own paranoid delusions to work out what Traltixx is actually doing and how to stop him.