Book I of Patterns Of Chaos. 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 another faster than light speeds. No other member race of the Compact had this ability and none had ever been able to learn the secrets of the tezars. Yet there were those ready to use any means to break the Choyan monopoly on FTL transport; those who, if they learnt of it, might take advantage of the fact that the world of Cho hovered on the brink of civil war, with the three ruling Houses - Star, Sky and Earth - watching Emperor Panshinea's slow decline, making their own plans to gain ascendancy in the coming power struggle. Palaton his fighting his own personal struggle - the knowledge that his tezar powers may be burning out - a fate which eventually befell all Choyan pilots. Yet he would soon be drawn into the Houses' political conflict, forced to pursue rumours 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...Cover art by Vincent Di Fate.