One of Arkady's oldest and dearest friends, Oleg Olesky, a former Russian cosmonaut, is staying at the Huxley to attend an aerospace symposium held at the hotel. The symposium, hosted by A.C. Chase of Chase Galactic - a private aerospace company for which Oleg now works - is where Chase plans to announce the imminent date of the first ever tourist space flight with Oleg as the pilot and former NASA astronaut Tyler Kirkpatrick as the co-pilot. Oleg has always been like a trouble-making and womanizing older brother to Arkady, who often had to fix his messes. Their reunion ends up being like old times when Oleg is accused of murder after Chase's head engineer, Randal Muller, falls to his death from the hotel roof. Although Oleg professes his innocence despite making up a bogus alibi for the time of Randal's death, Arkady eventually learns that Oleg did have motive which resulted in a physical altercation with Randal on the roof. When Arkady learns the secrets that Randal was keeping for which someone might want him dead, Oleg, Tyler, Chase, and Chase's wife - Delia Chase - seem to be the only four candidates of the murderer. Each has an alibi for the time of death, although many of those alibis to which the individual in question would rather not admit. Arkady has to figure out whose alibi has a hole in it.
—Huggo