The 22nd century. The Doctor, Benny, and Ace have joined a team of scientists investigating the mysterious planet Lucifer and its inhabitants, the enigmatic Angels. The multinational team is based on Lucifer's two moons, Belial and Moloch, which are extensively terraformed and connected by an impossible physical bridge. Future history shows that, in a very short time, the entire system will become enclosed in an impregnable void. And now one of the team has been murdered...
This novel contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Christine loses an arm in the Lift accident. Luckily, her family is rich enough to buy her a replacement, although it takes a while for it to start working.
- Ancient Artifact: The moons Belial and Moloch are this writ large — mysterious feats of engineering, their purpose unknown and their design esoteric. It turns out that when activated they are capable of warping reality.
- Asshole Victim: The three corporate shock troopers are introduced reflecting on the mass murder, rape and torture they have enjoyed over the years. One of them suffers hideous burns and has his life support switched off to save money; the other two suffer extreme Body Horror at the climax of the plot.
- Badass Bureaucrat: Bishop is a small and unassuming man who leans heavily on bureaucracy. He is eventually revealed to have the single highest body count of the entire Guild of Adjudicators.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Subverted — Ace has become disgusted by the Doctor's reliance on this trope, and at the climax chooses to hand him a gun and give him the choice of letting everyone die, or actually pulling the trigger himself for a change. The Doctor realises there is no third option, and shoots Legion dead.
- By-the-Book Cop: Bishop. He's here to investigate a mysterious death, and he does so conscientiously and effectively.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Ace betrays the Doctor and goes to work for [=IMC=]. Then she betrays them and helps the Doctor.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Madrigal LaFayette is using her wealth and industrial might to take over the government. She's sent Legion to take over the Lucifer expedition, with orders to pay the staff off and then kick them out of the base. The fact that this will kill everybody is regarded as a convenience.
- Circuit Judge: The Adjudicator.
- Defector from Decadence: Christine LaFayette's mother is the leader of the Earth Alliance of Corporations. Christine has rejected her mother's wealth and influence and run off to a remote research station, where she tries to help people as best she can.
- Eldritch Abomination: Legion is a seven-dimensional being. Humans and other four-dimensional beings are incapable of perceiving his entire form at once, and he sometimes answers questions before they're asked.
- Explosive Decompression: A man explodes into pink snow when he can't fully close his helmet before the Space Elevator he's in ruptures.
- Flamethrower Backfire: Corporate shock trooper Dommer suffers the consequences of improperly servicing his flamer.
- Historical Beauty Upgrade: In-universe. A historical drama about the Ice Warrior invasion of 2090 features a "handsome young museum curator", who is presumably meant to be this guy
. - I'm a Humanitarian: Strongly implied to have happened in North America as a result of an economic collapse. Victims included Bannen's wife and son.“There were ten million people and no food. What do you think happened?”
- Jerkass: Absolutely nobody likes Alex Bannen, and he's fine with that.
- Mental Fusion: How the Doctor, Benny and Ace survive the reality warping when the Ancient Artifact is activated. They temporarily merge into a gestalt being (both physically and mentally), and visit one another's formative memories.
- The Mole: Piper O'Rourke is secretly working for IMC, who drew her in with the hope of finding her husband alive.
- Multinational Team: No two members of the Lucifer expedition seem to be from the same cultural background (except Miles and Paula, who are father and daughter).
- Never Suicide: Federique Moshe-Raban is found with her wrists cut open and the knife still in her hand. The Doctor and Bishop both quickly recognise it as a murder.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Bishop — at one point he refuses to let his ship be used in a rescue operation because the appropriate forms have not been filled out. The forms are stored on his ship, and he can't let anybody aboard unless they've filled out the appropriate forms...
- Planet Looters: IMC has just recently gained the technology to strip-mine entire worlds, and they're planning to start with Lucifer.
- "Rashomon"-Style: A murder occurs in a facility with a futuristic surveillance system that makes only a basic record of what happens, relying on computer extrapolation to fill in the details when it's played back. It becomes both sides of a Rashomon Style dispute about what really happened in a certain conversation, producing two different extrapolations in which the speakers perform the same actions and say the same words, but the way they do it makes the difference between the version where one speaker was trying to help the other and the version where he was deliberately making matters worse.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Ace and a group of researchers are on the Lift when it rips open. One is killed instantly, another (Jesus) is blown out into space, a third (Christine) loses an arm. They spend over an hour getting Jesus back into the lift, improvising a way to handle monomolecular material without getting sliced apart, and working out a way to open up the Lift's inner shaft and travel along it to Moloch. Where everyone but Ace and Christine is almost immediately slaughtered by IMC's corporate shock troopers.
- The Shrink: Christine LaFayette's role on the team.
- Starfish Aliens:
- The Angels. They're never fully described, and it's not even clear if they have physical bodies as such, but they're so different from humanity that not only have all attempts at communication failed, the humans aren't even sure that the Angels are aware that they've been trying.
- Legion is a seven-dimensional being who can only be seen in pieces. None of those pieces resemble human beings in any way.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Bishop faces this dilemma after IMC moves in and his superior orders him to quit his investigation and let the corporate thugs get on with eliminating the scientists. He chooses good, and dies for it.
- Token Romance: Show Within a Show version. Benny watches a holodrama based on the events of "The Seeds of Death". This has grafted on a romance between Professor Eldred (who has become thirty years younger) and Gia (The Spock).
- A True Story in My Universe: Benny watches a holodrama Very Loosely Based On the events of "The Seeds of Death", with no mention of the Doctor and his companions, and a Token Romance grafted on.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In-universe; there's a reference to a holodrama based on "The Seeds of Death" which is only recognisable by the character names, awash with Adaptational Attractiveness and Token Romance, and doesn't mention the Doctor's involvement at all.
- Write Back to the Future: Attempted by IMC in the 26th century — after they work out that Ace is a time traveller, they politely ask her to investigate what happened on Lucifer 400 years earlier, and to send them a message with the details. The scheme fails, because Ace changes sides at the last minute.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The seven-dimensional Legion isn't even contiguous in three dimensions.
