Tolstoia, a colony on Venus, is populated by followers of the 19th century Russian novelist, Count Leo Tolstoi. They have developed their own curious political system that deems itself a pacifist Utopia. Curiously, however, any inhabitants who try to leave end up committing suicide. A small band of heroes and heroines has been dispatched to Tolstoia to determine whether they should be given the permission of the Intercolonial Office to colonize a nearby group of uninhabited islands. Their mission is to determine whether Tolstoia really is Utopia or merely a Potemkin Village, created to fool the rest of mankind.