Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: The chaos pilot - Palaton was among the elite of the Choyan race, a tezar, gifted with the power to navigate the Patterns of Chaos, able to pilot a starship from one planetary system to another at faster than light speeds. No other member race of the Compact had this ability, and none had ever been able to learn the secret of the tezars. Yet there were those eager to use any means to break the Choyan monopoly on FTL transport, those who, if they learned of it, might well take advantage of the fact that the world of Cho hovered on the brink of civil war, with three ruling Houses - Star, Sky and Earth - watching Emperor Panshinea's slow decline and making their own plans to gain ascendancy in the power struggles to come. Palaton, however, was caught up in a far more personal struggle, fighting against the knowledge that his own tezar powers might be burning out - a fate which eventually befell all Choyan pilots. Yet, despite his troubles, he would soon be drawn into the Houses' political conflict, forced to pursue rumors of a planet where forbidden experimentation was being carried out - experimentation which could renew a tezar's unique abilities with the aid of a race that had not yet won Compact membership, a race that called itself "human"...