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 is a world destroyed by ages of war and 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 a large facility deep beneath the Earth and a monk like order called cybers on the surface and throughout space 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.
When Earl was 10 years old and very poor, he snuck on board one of the spaceships that carried Cyclan members from Earth on their business, but he promised the captain who spared him that he would never reveal the fact that he had done so. Earl is a travelers, someone with skills or strengths that is able to travel among the starts paying low passage, arriving on new planets and working to earn their 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 lost way back to Earth.
Dumarest was with a carnival on Kyle, a tourist planet with beautiful hydrogen gasbag creatures whose fiery death inspired the sight seers. Collecting money earned from gladitorial 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 to ease intense fears she had been feeling and suddenly fled there 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 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 or 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 undertake to get royal jelly from the mutant bee’s hive but all but Earl are killed in a hug bee swarm and Earl realizes that the bees, like Derai, are telepathic.
Back at the field Earl is awaited by Blaine, Derai’s half brother, who tells Earl that Derai loves him and only abandoned him at the space port to protect him from Ustar who wants to marry her and control the family. Blaine takes Earl home to Derai, and Earl has a fight with Ustar and defeats him. Earl finds that the family plan to take the ancient head of the house, kept alive in great pain on royal jelly, to Folgone where he can 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 are always more who desire the privilege of the Folgonian pods than there are pods so there is a competition and Earl undertakes to represent the Caldor House as champion.
At the underground port on Folgone, an asteroid circling a white dwarf star, Earl and Derai quarrel and he leaves, gets dr
More summaries about the Derai: Earl Dumarest Series #2