On their first day in the colony Ron and Anne meet Borah, an affable bear-like creature from Haddon’s Galaxy and George meets a pair of swashbuckling cyanide-breathers named Barmese and Athol, whom Borah describes as intergalactic desperadoes. They also discover that the director of the colony is Tenarg, the Fleet Commander who, a year earlier, had ordered the destruction of Earth. Still filled with disdain for the people of Earth, Tenarg intends to make the Barrons’ stay on Rorla as miserable as possible.
