Lobsang, now an elderly and somewhat over-complex AI, seems to have suffered a breakdown of sorts. With Agnes, he now lives, in disguise, in an exotic High-Meggers world -- 'New Springfield' --- determined to lead a 'normal' life as a human colonist. They even adopt a child, a son. But it seems that Sally Linsay guided them there for a reason. For it's at New Springfield that the Long Earth chain of worlds has become 'entangled' with another Long world -- an alien planet. Strange haunted-house sightings in a cellar reveal this alien world to be inhabited by voracious colonising cyborgs --- 'silver beetles' -- who seem to be modifying this world for their own terrifying purposes.