"The setting of Maurice Shadbolt's dramatic new novel is vast: the third of our planet we call the Pacific. So is its theme: the survival of man in our time. This is the story of the protest yacht Moana Nui and the four men--and perhaps a dead woman--who sail her into the French nuclear test zone about Mururoa Atoll...These are men bound for collision not only with the French navy, in their frail yacht, but also with the deadliest truth in our century, the nuclear cloud which shadows the eart. From one of the most vivid and heroic protests in recent history--that of the tiny boats which New Zealanders sialed into the Mururoa danger zone in the 1970s, thereby helping end French atmospheric tests in the Pacific--Maurice Shadbolt has distilled a strange and memorable story. it is also tense and exciting as any our time may have to tell"--Dust jacket.