Melinda comes to Washington DC to visit her friend Debbie, and to find a job in government, where she hopes to do her part to make it better. She gets a lower echelon administrative position at the Pentagon, and finds things pretty slack. Her boss seems to be more interested in getting into her pants than trying to find lost data on the Russians. Melinda resists his advances and begins working her way up in the Pentagon, finding subtle ways of getting her policies implemented by manipulating the slovenly males that populate the Pentagon, including finding a way to defuse the mounting conflict with the Russians

Jessup, forced to hide his true identity, is imprisoned on a deadly and desolate planet, the Star Prison. banished to mine rabid rivers for the elusive Fire Gems, Jessup and his men must battle bands of derelict prisoners and fight the fatal fangs of the Star Worms in order to supply the Lords of the Evil Empire with the sacred source of their hedonistic hallucinogenic opiates.