Jack's not happy. His team is rebellious, his sisters are untrustworthy and all he wants to do is get back to Earth. The Nel, he reckons, will be a lot easier to deal with than this pestilent group of Gaians. melanie has other ideas. She needs Jack on-side because, in his own words, it's not about the answers, it's about the questions. And Jack knows what those questions are.

Still at loggerheads, the team travel to the garden planet of Tranasyne where melanie needs a cutting from a particular plant. The trouble is, that plant is both intelligent and belligerent.

Barely escaping with their lives, they continue on to Garadana where they address the first question: how to get to Earth through the Nel surveillance net. They come up with an idea that just might work - as long as they can figure out how to make a fifty-ton snowball.