How tiring it is: living in a tropical paradise, looking forward to meeting someone who is not even going to show up! And isn’t it better to interrupt this unbearable wait by plunging into new, dangerous adventures? That's what Laurence Bentley thought as she headed to the Pirkford system, a notorious space colony for antisocial elements. She only needed to make one flight as a navigator to the surface of the hydrogen-helium ocean on the surface of the planet Tartarus and take pictures of a space cruiser captured by terrorists. But this task turned out to be not so simple. The first flight almost cost her her life; the pictures were ruined, and they tried to blame her for it. Why does her pilot, without hiding his mistrust, still take her under his protection? What other tests await Laura in the space prison: conspiracies, chases, shootouts, and maybe new love?