The climactic Karil and Loris adventure was inspired, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, by the Odyssey, with a Ganymede Brothel called The Lotus Eaters, Jupiter as the giant Cyclops, the Asteroid Belt as the Wandering Rocks, the Venus Hellscape as Hades, and a Martian colony as Ithaca. Investigating the strange disappearances of solar-sail ships in the Belt, the crew of Atalanta are seized by the powerful interplanetary criminal Madame Feronia (Circe), are imprisoned on Venus (Hades), and confronted by the monumental secret beneath that planet’s deadly atmosphere, while they try to find their way to their spiritual home. Atalanta has the last word of the series, the final chapter entirely in her voice.