After escaping from prison, criminal mastermind Neville Savage breaks into the Tower of London and steals the Crown Jewels. The children of the Centauri Network are too late to stop him as he escapes in a submarine to Ireland.
In a castle in Spain, Neville Savage has managed to get hold of Sir Joshua's latest invention, the Duplivox Mark VII, a device which allows one to perfectly transfer the voice of one person to another.
Prior to Spike leaving to play in a soccer tournament in South Africa, Centauri HQ is alerted to the first in a pair of thefts of ancient South African vases, the first from a Sydney gallery and later, one in Johannesburg.
Neville Savage receives some troubling new at the bank -- he is broke; his fortune squandered searching the world for treasures -- and being stymied at every turn by the Centauri Network.
