Cletus Tritz may have wasted his family fortune on frivolities and romps around the world with his new wife Georgine, but just as things seem hopeless he is given the chance to work as a secretary at the famous Frost-Wick Industries. A great admirer of the clockwork and steam company, he is eager to impress, but the longer he works there the more even a person as frivolous as he has to admit there are dark secrets involved, including aliens and secret technology. That, and he is eventually kidnapped by a seeming rabble of extraterrestrials bound to stop an evil race from interfering with Humans before it's too late, and it all has to do with a weapon now lodged in Cletus' brain.