Friday is not an easy girl. She easily escapes surveillance, is capable of killing with her bare hands and enduring inhuman torture, and also has a lot of other advantages. She is an agent of a powerful secret organization whose sphere of activity is the entire Earth, as well as other planets. And Friday also differs from those around her in her origin - she is an artificial person, grown in a laboratory...

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me..." - Psalm twenty-two, that , which is traditionally read at funerals. Robert Heinlein wrote the novel, the title of which is taken from these lines, as the last novel in his life, being seriously, almost hopelessly ill. Those who knew him said that the author portrayed himself in the image of the inflexible old man Johann Smith. Johann Smith is also old and also hopelessly ill, but he is not just desperately clinging to life - he is preparing to give a decisive battle to death itself. And - he wins! And since any victory is the daughter of chance, the results are completely unexpected...