Captain Doctor Simon Afrial was an outstanding specialist, a doctor of biochemistry and alien linguistics, as well as a master engineer, a specialist in magnetic weapons. He was thirty-eight years old. He was also a shaper. Genetic engineering and a harsh training regimen as a child gave him an IQ of one hundred and eighty units. He was not the smartest agent of the Ring Council, but he had the most stable psyche, and he was trusted more than others. And the shapers, in their fight against the mechanists, needed a new impetus, a new “trump card”. And so he was sent to study the Swarm - a strange space race living in symbiosis on one of the huge asteroids...

But he could not even imagine what awaits him there... (fantlab.ru)