Almost twenty years later, Vernor Vinge created a sequel to his unforgettable masterpiece “Flame over the Abyss.” And on the planet of Claws, ten years have passed since the catastrophe that destroyed humanity along with an innumerable number of other intelligent races of Outland, driving away a small handful of people and a couple of thinking ones coral riders into the wild world of gregarious minds. By the time humans arrived, the Claw civilization roughly corresponded to the Dark Ages of Old Earth. The crew of Out-of-Band-II, a ship from the upper Zones of Thought, came to the aid of the High Laboratory ship, which in a last desperate leap saved more than a hundred human children from Destruction. Ravna Bergsndot and Pham Nuwen, through superhuman efforts and self-sacrifice, were able not only to save the survivors of the crash, but also to hide the entire world from the all-consuming Destruction, whose fleet remained thirty light years from the planet. After Fam gave his life to plunge the Talon world into the Slow Zone and thereby close it off from Destruction for a sufficiently long time, Ravna devoted herself and all the remaining resources of Out-of-Band-II to preserving the remnants of humanity, establishing good relations with the Talons, and most importantly - accelerated technological progress, which would allow, during the time that Fam won for them, to raise civilization to a level where it would be possible to resist Destruction. But the saved children grew up and not all of them share the faith and aspirations of Ravna...