The asteroid work crews don't have much to do but tell tall tales to each other. One man tells a particularly riveting account of an expedition where he met a strange parasitic species that inhabits human bodies and barely escaped unscathed—or did he?

An outer space fugitive on the run stops to help an old friend and becomes involved in a revolution. A fugitive pilot from Earth helps his found family escape persecution from the Coalition and gets involved in a revolution taking place on another planet.

Shipwrecked on a planet whose extreme environment speeds their heart rates, generations of humans age rapidly, living only 8 days each and warring with one another for a cavern that extends the human lifespan to 11 days. When a young man and his girlfriend make it to the only remaining, functional ship, they find that, on the ship, their heartrates and lifespans are extended to normal.