Gully Foyle was a mechanic's mate 3rd class, a crewman with no education, no skills and no ambition. But he did want to live. And Gully Foyle had lived for 170days, the only survivor of the wreck of the spaceship Nomad, drifting halfway between Mars and Jupiter, living in an airtight locker the size of a giant's coffin, when the spaceship Vorga passed by, leaving him to rot, giving him a compelling reason to make it back to earth.