In a distant future New York medical student Driscoll Rampart accomplishes his internship at Rusta a rural planet that doesn't revolve around its axis and therefore is divided into contrasting halves of eternal day vs. eternal night. One is a Victorian-styled colony the other a medieval kingdom. Both leave Rampart in a state of constant wonder as he finds his way among humans and aliens strange dreams and even stranger reality a dark keep and a red sea and more universal matters of war and peace good and bad love and hate and sickness and health.