The chronicle of adventures of the survey ship Sarafand as it journeys through space exploring and mapping newly-discovered planets.The mission brings them into contact with man startling life-forms and menacing aliens. On one world the Sarafand sends out six survey modules and seven return: one of them is a shape-changing malevolent alien - but which?On another planet they discover a humanoid civilisation which can move around in time. Suddenly the Sarafand investigators are marooned millions of years in the past.Finally the Sarafand and its crew are stranded in a distant galaxy where everything - including them - is shrinking inexorably to zero size...