For Sudden Smith, getting into the Tollah moonbase was not difficult. The hard part was finding his way through the maze of underground corridors, tunneled-out chambers, gravshafts, and teleportals, releasing the ten humans held captive somewhere within— and getting out alive. Not that there was much choice: a full-scale attack from space would ensure the death of the prisoners. The trouble had started when a renegade High Tollah, fearing the traditional Tollah punishment for deposed leaders (being demandibled), sought sanctuary in the Stellar Union. In a snit of frustration, the remaining High Tollah ordered a clawful of the nearest men and women— who happened to be from the Orion colony of Ultima Thule— taken prisoner. Inside a secret base on a moonlet circling Rigel, on the fringe of human-occupied space, Tollah scientists used their unwilling subjects to find a means of reducing the human race to the status ot Common Tollah— which is to say, sheep. In the Tollah scheme of things, there was room in the cosmos for only one set of decision-makers: the High Tollah.

For Sudden Smith, getting into the Tollah moonbase was not difficult. The hard part was finding his way through the maze of underground corridors, tunneled-out chambers, gravshafts, and teleportals, releasing the ten humans held captive somewhere within— and getting out alive. Not that there was much choice: a full-scale attack from space would ensure the death of the prisoners. The trouble had started when a renegade High Tollah, fearing the traditional Tollah punishment for deposed leaders (being demandibled), sought sanctuary in the Stellar Union. In a snit of frustration, the remaining High Tollah ordered a clawful of the nearest men and women— who happened to be from the Orion colony of Ultima Thule— taken prisoner. Inside a secret base on a moonlet circling Rigel, on the fringe of human-occupied space, Tollah scientists used their unwilling subjects to find a means of reducing the human race to the status ot Common Tollah— which is to say, sheep. In the Tollah scheme of things, there was room in the cosmos for only one set of decision-makers: the High Tollah.