The SkinnerIs immortality worth the price? The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who has been dead for seven hundred years but still hunts a notorious criminal. On Spatterjay's vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites.