Ijon Tichy travels undercover to a robot world, joining an organization to clean up world history thru time travel. Things go crazy immediately. His spaceship runs into gravitational vortices at relativistic speeds, resulting in massive time anomalies. It may be a blessing in disguise. The reason he couldn't get out of the way was that a meteor had shattered the drive regulator and u0026 rudder. He could no longer steer his ship. He had a spare rudder, but couldn't install it. It was a two-man job and u0026 he was alone. So when other versions of him start appearing, all he should need do is team up with one of them, fix the rudder and u0026 leave the gravitational vortex field.After that gets straightened out, he goes undercover. A ship's computer has mutineed and u0026 started its own colony, reproducing itself on a previously uninhabited planet. The insurance company paid the shipowner's claim, and u0026 now believes that the ship, it's computer and u0026 all its progeny belong to them. Tichy disguises himself as a robot and u0026 goes to investigate.On another voyage, he heads to a planet where the government irrigation agency has irrigated beyond all need and u0026 refused to give up power. People live in water and u0026 are jailed in dry cells if they violate the love of water.After his modern voyages, he comes back from 2166 to recruit himself as a member of THEOHIPPIP, the Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and u0026 Interplanetary Planning. History is in a mess because of all the time travelers. THEOHIPPIP's mission is: "For World History to be regulated, cleaned up, straightened out, adjusted and u0026 perfected, all in accordance with the principles of humanitarianism, rationalism and u0026 general esthetics. You can understand, surely, that with such a shambles and u0026 slaughterhouse in one's family tree it's awkward to go calling on important cosmic civilizations!...If need be, alterations will be made even before the rise of man, so that he arises better."