When a man has a great deal of knowledge, it becomes extremely easy for him to confuse "knowledge" with "wisdom". and forget that the antonym of "wisdom" is not "ignorance" but "folly."
Hudson lay in his sleeping bag, staring at the sky. It bothered him a lot. There was not one familiar constellation, not one star that he could name with any certainty. This juggling of the stars, he thought, emphasized more than anything else in this ancient land the vast gulf of years which lay between him and the Earth where he had been-or would be-born.
Just missing the tall, gaunt man who dodged down the stairs of the Earth Embassy. A figure loomed in a doorway and he snapped off a quick blaster shot at it--missed. He'd killed one man, wounded others--and was carrying papers stolen from the secret Embassy files. They had to stop him--but they couldn't! And, worlds away, the men of Department 99 watched on their galaxy-spanning view-screen. knowing they were responsible for this disaster--and powerless to do anything about it!
A Playboy is someone with power, too much time on his hands, and too little sense of a goal worth achieving. And if the Playboy happens to belong to a highly advanced culture....
The opening act of a true space opera. A cynical officer whose career wasn't exactly going great is given a shot at glory and accepts for the wrong reasons. A ship that should not even exist finds itself circling the changeover of eras, the good times have passed and the storms are approaching. A galactic alliance on the brink of a new age, the many parts that make its whole unaware of each other. A hastily-gathered crew learning to become a unit, not by choice, but by necessity.