A fantastic tale by three time Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer Jack Cage lived on the planet Dare. He knew that he was human, and that he was the oldest son of a wealthy human farmer. But he hardly dared to admit to himself, let alone to his family, the keen interest he felt in the "native" inhabitants of Dare - those spectacularly beautiful humanoid creatures whose magnificent hair, growing clear down to the base of the spine, had given them their name of "horstel". It was death for any human to consort with any horstel after they became adult. For the humans of Dare still lived by the standards and mores of three hundred years before, when they had been mysteriously whisked away from planet Earth and brought to this new planet. When Jack Cage is chosen to join a secret army intent on ridding Dare of the horstels and their mystical ways, war rages, but remarkable events soon force Jack to decide between loyalty to his nation or peace and harmony for all Darians.