Warrior ape Trask has crash landed on a dead world, stranded and ready to honorably join his elders in the afterlife. But that is interrupted when a human terraforming ship arrives to restore the planet. Soon this lone simian survivor is at the center of an intergalactic conflict between a greedy corporation, a fanatical religious cult, and a race of hostile aliens who seek apes for food. His only chance for freedom is with the help of a sympathetic and resourceful army colonel. But can just the two of them avert all out war in the cosmos?