A lighthouse guardian leads a young prince towards an imaginary world, Taxandria, where the boy learns about the power of love and the value of liberty. A totalitarian regime has forbidden time: time watches have been confiscated, photo cameras are illegal as they freeze a point in time. A typical Servais theme: a power is oppressed by a constraint that denies what is best in the individual, and therefore has to be twisted in various ways, to establish an entirely artificial world, that has rules that may question some of the rules of our world at this side of the mirror.

An ivory ape escapes from a freighter and makes its way to Bermuda. Two anthropologists want to save it, but the local authorities hire a big-game hunter to track it down and kill it.

An innocent game during an opulent weekend at a Scottish castle annoys the sinister housekeeper and causes several family skeletons to rattle in their cupboards.

Russian and British submarines with nuclear missiles on board both vanish from sight without a trace. England and Russia both blame each other as James Bond tries to solve the riddle of the disappearing ships. But the KGB also has an agent on the case.