D.C. The main protagonists are three longtime friends. Paul Hagbolt is escorting Margo Gelhorn (and her cat, Miaow) to observe the lunar eclipse at an observatory in California. Their friend, and Margo's fiance, is Don Merriam, one of the American astronauts at the Moon base. Following on a whim a sign advertising a "flying saucer symposium", Paul and Margo fall in with a group of intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. At that point events overtake them. The new planet appears and triggers an earthquake that buries their cars in a landslide. They must avoid tsunamis, more earthquakes, roving mobs and flying saucers to survive. On the Moon Don Merriam is the only astronaut to escape the destruction of the American moonbase. He tries to take off in one of the base's spaceships, only to fall through the Moon itself as it splits asunder under the influence of the new planet. His ship is eventually captured by its crew. Events take a bizarre turn when the group of saucer enthusiasts is faced with a tsunami. A flying saucer appears, and a cat-like being uses some kind of gun to repel the waves. Then the being uses the same device to pull Paul, who is holding Miaow, into the saucer. At the same time the gun falls into the hands of the people on the ground. In the saucer Paul meets a being calling itself Tigerishka. A large, female telepathic feline creature, she initially mistakes Miaow as the intelligent being whose thoughts she can hear, and Paul as a "monkey". Realizing her mistake, she regards Paul with contempt. Monkey-beings are not well regarded by her people. However she slowly warms to him, and explains why her planet had consumed the Moon. Like many of the human characters, her people are intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. They belong to a culture that spans the Universe, has achieved immortality, and can construct planets and traverse hyperspace. They can even create bodies for themselves that reflect the origins of their races, such as Tigerishka's cat-form. They are, however, fleeing their culture's police. The standard culture rejects nonconformists, and devotes itself to ensuring that intelligent life survives to the end of time, whereas Tigerishka's cohort wants to explore hyperspace and tinker with space, time and the Mind. Their flight has brought them to Earth orbit to refuel as huge amounts of matter must be converted to