Charlie Perkins is having a very strange year. Prospecting in the Black Range Mountains of southern New Mexico has only been so-so, but that's not the problem. When he finds someone else's stash of gold then a body crushed under a tree what does he do? Why he works the claim, of course, like any self-respecting desert rat would do, no sense in a perfectly good claim going to waste just because its owner is deceased There's the issue of the late claim owner's partner, who sees the stash and all the rest of the gold Charlie mines out of the dig as his and his attitude is getting right down homicidal since Charlie has the gold and the partner is on the run for killing his mentor. Then there's the alien probe. Designed to scoop up and discard indigenous life forms until it finds the right one possessed of enough intelligence to understand the probe's message, it finds Charlie or Charlie finds it and he is changed forever. The probe endows Charlie with not only information about its source but it greatly enhances his brain's ability to function and his latent psionic abilities. Unfortunately the homicidal partner has been in the probe too and has the same abilities and that's not a good thing because all the partner wants is to kill Charlie and take his gold.. Finally there's the Air Force. Charlie leads them to the probe early on but it takes longer for them to catch on to Charlie's "other" abilities and when they do, the intelligence community is rocked into a dither trying to marshal Charlie's talents for the good of the nation.. Now it's up to Charlie to get himself out of this mess or at least make the best of it.