Derai is the second in the series of British Science Fiction and Western author EC Tubb's series on the travels of the
wandering cosmic warrior Earl
Dumarest. Earl was born on Earth. Earth in this far distant future was a world destroyed by ages of war with little left of its natural bounty, occupied only by the destitute on the surface and beneath it by a huge secret society called the Cyclan whose members' brains have been surgically changed to be capable only of logic and devoid of emotion. The Cyclan contained thousands of disembodied brains nurtured in their large facility deep beneath the Earth and a monk-like order whose members are called cybers on the surface and throughout the galaxy who had not yet earned the reward of disembodiment. Cybers wear scarlet robes and travel the settled areas of the galaxy establishing clandestine control over inhabited worlds by advising rulers and rendering them dependent.
When Earl was 10 years old and very poor, he snuck on board one of the spaceships that carried Cyclan cargoes to and from Earth, but he promised the captain who spared him that he would never reveal the fact that he had broken the proscription. Earl was a traveler, someone with skills or strengths that was able to travel among the starts paying low passage, arriving on new planets and working to earn his next passage. After escaping Earth, Earl did this for many years gradually working his way to the crowded worlds at the galactic core where Earth’s name had been forgotten. When he served the Matriach of Kund on Gath he decided he had wandered enough and began to try to discover his way back to Earth.
Not long after leaving Gath, Dumarest was with a carnival on Kyle, a tourist planet with beautiful hydrogen gasbag creatures whose fiery death entertained sightseers. Collecting money earned from knife bouts he was about to depart for Hive when the factor of Kyle convinced him to take a commission to deliver Derai, the telepathic daughter and heiress of the powerful Caldor House to her family. She had been at a Cyclan-run college seeking a cure to intense fears she had been feeling when she suddenly fled, seeking her way home. Earl accepted the commission and took her back to Hive becoming her lover en route.
Hive was a planet ruled by 11 noble families. Its main products were honey related, the most important being a kind of longevity inducing royal jelly monopolized by the families. On arriving, Derai met her cousin Ustar and inexplicably abandoned Earl at the field. Earl, with an ironic thought for the gratitude of princes, commissioned a vehicle and went to the village of Lausary, in the radioactive and mutant generating Free Zone, where there was an old man said to know something of the location of Earth. Finding the village abandoned with only the mark of the Cyclan at the old man’s house, Earl was attacked on his return by huge mutant bees. Rescued by the men of a nearby village he and they undertook to get royal jelly from the mutant bee’s hive. All but Earl are killed in a huge bee swarm and Earl realized that the bees, like Derai, were telepathic.
Back at the field Earl was awaited by Blaine, Derai’s half-brother, who told Earl that Derai loved him and only abandoned him at the space port to protect him from Ustar who wanted to marry her and thus control the family. Blaine took Earl home to Derai, and Earl soon was maneuvered into a fight with Ustar who he defeated. Earls and Derai resumed their romance. Earl learned the family planned to take the ancient head of house, kept alive in great pain on royal jelly, to Folgone where he could be placed in a special plant pod and be made subjectively to live 1000 pleasant years in his dreams before being absorbed into the plant. There were always more who desired the privilege of the Folgonian pods than there were pods so there was a competition and Earl undertook to represent the Caldor House as champion.
At the underground port on Folgone, an asteroid circling a white dwarf star, Earl and Derai quarreled and he left, got drunk and found Nada, his old flame from Kayle. When he came around, he found that Derai had already entered the combat area and that the old Caldor House head had died. He got Blaine to provide money and entered as a second Caldor champion. Using his thoughts to call Derai, he found her and they won through to the exit of the combat area. There the Caldor house cyber Regor tried to kill Earl and capture Derai, who the Cyclan wanted for her telepathic abilities and the genes and tissue she could provide.
Derai tried to save Earl and she was mortally wounded. Earl used the knife he received from Jacko, a friend and another of Nada’s erstwhile suitors, who had been killed getting the knife to Earl in the combat area, to kill the cyber. Earl put the dying Derai into the pod won originally for her ancestor, the head of the Caldor House so she could dream of 1000 years of subjective happiness with him. Declining Blaine’s offer to stay on and join the Caldor House on Hive, Earl returned to his search for Earth.