When oil suddenly gushes from the ground in Whitney, it makes prospectors very happy, but not the inhabitants, for a pestilential smell soon covers the small town. Abandoning her home, Whitney’s elder Miss Bluemarket moves to Smithville with her three pets – three adult buffaloes. Her search for a new home makes her easy prey for unscrupulous

In the 23rd century, humans and Sandjarrs are allowed to join an intergalactic multiracial organisation set up 8,000 years before. The humans are seen as a belligerent, underdeveloped race by the other members of the organisation and have been kept out of it until now. The Sandjarrs had stayed out of interplanetary politics until a war between