When the little boy Thorby, a victim of space slave traders, found himself on a slave market, no one could have imagined that the old crippled beggar who bought Thorby for next to nothing would open the way to the stars for him. A little slave, who began his adult life in the slums of Jubbulpore, the capital of the Nine Worlds, will turn into a conqueror of space, a member of the powerful clan of Rogue Traders, and ahead of him is a life full of incredible adventures in a beautiful and terrible world created by the inexhaustible imagination of Robert Heinlein.