Earl Dumarest has travelled from Folgone where he lost Derai to the world of Toy where he hoped to consult the
famous computer of the planet’s rulers to see if the coordinates of Earth might be found there. As he disembarks he is arrested for vagrancy and forced to go with others to an island in the ocean of Toy to fight in a gladiatorial contest of opposing armies. Earl’s group was under the patronage of the Toymaster, Groshen, ruler of Toy. The Toymaster was the leader of the leading family that had colonized Toy. As such he was the largest stockholder. Toy was settled by colonists many years before who engaged in weaving very special cloth made of threads spun by special carnivorous spiders.
Earl’s side was defeated and he and other stragglers await nightfall and the coming day when they will be hunted and killed by sportsmen. Earl teamed up with Legraine and managed to down a raft using is long ago Earth acquired skills with a rock and a sling. Earl and Legraine hide in a sea cave on the coast but when Earl wakes in the morning, Legraine is gone with the raft. Earl makes it up the cliff and is captured by a minor stockholder named Ledra who is also a physician. She brings him back to health and asks him to supply some of his DNA material so that she can use it in her cloning experiments (she is a bit of an artist – see similar plot element in Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom: The Jesus Incident). Dumarest, fearing what his DNA will be used to produced and what kind of life it would have escapes but in trying to obtain passage on a ship is recaptured, tried acquitted of all but the charge of theft of a raft by his attorney and then and auctioned as a slave to pay for the raft.
While Earl has been enjoying his usual dosage of perilous fortune and hairsbreadth escapes, an leading shareholder, Leon, has been working with other shareholders to try to unseat the Toymaster. They conclude that it is impossible to do so unless they are joined by the Toymaster’s sister, Quara who is fond of Leon (There is a hint Leon was find of Quara’s mother as well but lost her to the Toymaster’s and Quara’s father). Leon’s conspiracy is discovered and those conspirators who are not identified (including Leon) are force to keep quiet.
The Toymaster has been keeping a Cyber named Creel to advise him.
Earl’s slave master trains him and collars him. The collar is the explosive and pain inducing collar that appeared in Star Trek, the Gamesters of Triskelion. Earl’s owner trains him for a gladiatorial bout but when he is made fight before the Toymaster and other Shareholders, he is not put up against another Gladiator but to kill a large number of the weaver spiders with his bare hands before they sting and paralyze and eat Earl and the immobilized Legraine (who has been captured) Earl manages to kill all the spiders before a sting immobilizes him and he is purchased by Quara who is in the crowd. Quara frees Earl from the collar, which he pockets, offers him money and the use of the computer in exchange for his fighting for her and enters a wager on a gladiatorial contest between Earl (her champion) and the Toymaster for controlling interest in stock of Toy.
Earl enters a Moebius strip type three dimensional arena very near the computer. He and Legraine split up and eventually Earl finds the Toymaster. They fight, but are interrupted Creel and Legraine, who has been working for him, kill the Toymaster with a laser and open a tunnel into the adjoining computer complex with the intent of contaminating the computer with a virus (Yes E. C. Tubb predicted computer viruses in 1969.). By destroying the computer the Cyclan could make Toy and perhaps other worlds dependent on the Cyclan. The Cyber had been watching Earl and used him and the predictable behaviour of the others to get in position to destroy the computer.
Earl, not willing to lose the information the computer might hold, threw his old slave collar at the cyber and when the cyber shot the collar with the laser, it exploded killing he and Legraine, preventing the virus from attacking the computer and, sadly, damaging the part of the computer that held the information that Earl wanted. Earl was rescued from the maze but all Leon and Quara could find was the alternate Earth name Terra. Leon finally realizes that he has learned to love Quara and not the memory of her mother and engages to marry her. Earl turns down Leon’s and Quara’s heartfelt offer to let him stay on Toy as a stockholder and continued the search for Earth.
This story was also interesting in that the Stockholders, the aristocracy of the world of Toy, and indeed the majority of the characters in the story, were black. 1969 was a time of increasing assertiveness and pride among peoples of African descent in the English speaking world and the Toyman was something of a reflection of the feeling of that era.