Topmaster Stenton Rull, the head of Company security, receives a tip about rebel activity at a research station in the Blind Heart desert, and when he investigates, he finds a cache of weapons in the station. He interrogates the two scientists working at the station, Sheen and Rov, but they claim to have no idea what he’s talking about. He assumes they’re lying and kills them both, only to learn, when he returns to Kaldor City, that Sheen was apparently a personal friend of Uvanov. Irritated, Rull forces his way into the Firstmasters’ oasis to speak with Firstmaster Landerchild, who gave him the tip, but the intrusion angers Firstmaster Strecker, who decides to fire the attendant who interrupted his and Landerchild’s leisure time to report that Rull had arrived. Feeling responsible for the attendant’s predicament, Rull murders Strecker.

A man named Hume visits Uvanov, claiming to have found the skull of Taren Capel. Iago, who is now working as Uvanov’s security consultant, orders Hume to remove the skull from its container before presenting it to Uvanov; however, the skull has been coated with contact poison, and Hume drops dead moments after touching it. Uvanov blames his personal assistant, Justina, for letting Hume into his presence, since she claims to have known him prior to this. He then tricks her and Iago into letting slip that they are sleeping together. Since Rull is busy elsewhere, and Iago is now implicated in the assassination attempt due to his relationship with Justina and hers with Hume, Uvanov assigns on the investigation to security chief Cotton.

Cotton passes on the bulk of the work to his associate, Blayes, who begins by questioning Iago. Iago has deduced that Hume handled the skull because he believed he’d been given the antidote, which implies that he was working with or for someone else. Blayes then tries to find a match for the skull itself, and is surprised to find that it belonged to Sheen. When she jets out to the research station, she finds Rull waiting there, and assumes that he’s trying to cover up his own part in the assassination attempt. For his part, Rull assumes that she’s here to collect the cache of rebel weapons. However, they’ve already been removed, and when Blayes and Rull compare stories, they conclude that some other party passed on a false tip to Rull, got Sheen killed and tried to use his skull as a weapon against Uvanov. But the rumour about Sheen being a friend of Uvanov’s was also false, so what’s really going on?