PERO ARSLAN becomes a navigator-pilot on a buccaneer ship at the pirate center of Brigantine Island, where this business is legal. But the pirate fl eet is in steep decline due to new defenses of commercial ships with artillery and gyrocopters. He joins those turning to legitimate trade and helps bring vitrified hardwood developed in the tropics. Then he becomes part of a group building a vitrifying factory on his home island to glassify coral. A new, advanced gangster piracy rises to threaten shipping and is opposed with plasmatic gas screens by Pero and his friends.