 From the 1968 edition onwards, Delany's original text has been restored, as the first edition was shortened by about fifteen pages for publication in the Ace Double format.In a post-atomic future, when civilization has regressed to something near the Middle Ages or even before, a young student and poet, Geo, takes a job as a sailor on a boat.He travels with a strange passenger, a priestess of the goddess Argo, who is heading toward a mysterious land of mutants and high radiation, called Aptor.