Alan Donnell works on his father's cargo spaceship, ferrying goods to Earth and people out to space. Their ship can go almost the speed of light, but with the way time slows down as you approach that speed, it means Alan is biologically 17, even though he was born 300 years ago. He had a twin, but Steve jumped ship on Earth during their last trip. A few months for Alan, 9 years for Steve.
So the next time he's on Earth, Alan decides to go looking. Not only for his brother, but the work of a physicist from over a 1,000 years ago, whose writing claims he was on the verge of unlocking faster-than-light travel.
The search for Steve, and later for the Cavour Drive, don't seem to take up that many pages. The search for the Drive, maybe a sixth of the book near the end. The search for his brother, maybe a third of the book, and much of that is really about Alan trying to figure out how society on Earth works so he can figure out how to even try to find his brother. A lot of that involves Alan falling in with a highly successful gambler named Hawkes, who helps Alan out, but has his own motives. With Hawkes' aid, it takes very little time to find Steve and resolve his difficulties, at which point Silverberg focuses on Alan's learning to be a gambler at Hawkes' elbow.
Silverberg makes a point that no more often than "spacers" are on Earth, and the time that passes between visits, there can be vast changes in culture or language the spacemen are unprepared for. Plus, they essentially live in isolated communities on their ships, everyone knowing everyone. Earth is a world of 8 billion (it's around the year 3750 in the book, so Silverberg underestimated our ability to procreate), it's a very different situation.
It's interesting to note aspects of the future Silverberg correctly anticipates, and those where he misses. That everyone is supposed to has a specialized locator chip on their person at all times. That there's still segregation, people who are out and those who are in (although Silverberg presents on a basis of whether one is born into a trade guild, rather than race or religion.) But physical books are not unknown in the 38th Century, although there is some transcription of them to electronic media, and there are still cars (although it's unclear what they run on.) Computers are a part of society, although you still have to feed them a tape with information for them to calculate.
Silverberg never lingers on anything in the plot for too long, whether that's Alan's improvement at gambling, or a proposed heist of an armored car (paper money, also still a thing in the 38th Century). Overall, it's a very quick read.
'Hawkes had a gift - the gift of winning. But he didn't abuse that gift. He concealed it a little, so the people who lacked his talent did not get too jealous of him. Jealousy ran high on Earth; people here led short ugly lives, and there was none of the serenity and friendliness of life aboard a starship.'
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