Maltby, a man with a human brain and a machine brain, sees a strange floating orb of light in his room. He immediately recognizes it as a high tech voice-communication device that can beam a direct connection to anyone anywhere. He is a Mixed Man, a hidden race of double minded people, living amongst humans, being contacted by the Hidden Ones of his race. Though he is married to a human woman, he has allegiance to three different groups: his race, the Dellian aliens that kidnapped him at a young age and raised him, and the human race that saved him. Due to copious amounts of brainwashing, it was impossbile for him to take a side against any of them, so tried to live his life in a way that made everyone happy. The person calling him is the leader of the Mixed Men, his biggest enemy from home, who has just declared war on all of the other alien races and is asking Maltby to talk his wife, the leader of the human's military, into letting him win.

His wife, Gloria, sees all of this communication happen and wants to continue to support Maltby. But her psychologist on the ship tells her that she's just acting like a woman supporting her lover, so she kicks him off the ship at the next planet. Maltby immediately makes plans with other secret Mixed Men to go to the hidden city of his people. He is technically their king, as their government is ruled by a hereditary monarchy, but since his capture by other aliens his enemy took over control of the race and is now waging war.

Back home on one of the hidden cities on one of the hidden planets the Mixed Men controlled, Maltby gives a speech delineating how they will lose a war with the Imperial Earth Army if they fight them as their weapons are so great, and the breakaway Imperial colonies of the Fifty Suns that they are already at war with will only weaken them for any coming fight with Imperial Earth. Hunston bombards the speech with lots of noise so that no one can hear, and Maltby fears an assassination attempt. Maltby heads back to the planet he was left on, so as not to raise any suspicion with the Earth army. But Hunston succeeds in taking over the Fifty Suns military and declaring war against the Earth army. Maltby decides he must save his wife, the leader of that army, on his own.

With little help, Maltby heads to another planet, where he stumbles into the psychologist of his wife's ship. The ship that he discovers was captured in a wide-ranging plan that he couldn't forsee, but that this silly woman psychologist alone let happen. The psychologist leaves him, and travels back to Gloria who in fact was not captured but is instead pulling a massive ruse on Maltby and the entire galaxy. Her hope is that Maltby will defeat Hunston for her without any work on her part in a fit to get her back.

Maltby effectively walks onto the ship, which is docked on the planet he is on, and immediately gets captured. Hunston, who is on the ship, explains that he wants to use this random ship to destroy Earth. Maltby attacks Hunston, wins easily, and saves the day. All of the other Mixed Men who joined in the attack immediately swear their allegiance to Maltby as he is their hereditary leader.