Mark and Kim are sent to Betelgeuse to look for survivors of the
spacecraft crash that killed 3,000 people seven years earlier. They do
find survivors, among them Tazio Menegaz and Colonel Logan, who tell
them the colonisers had been divided over whether the Lums (indigenous
creatures) are as intelligent as humans. If they are, the humans would
have been forced to abandon their colonising enterprise according to UN
laws. Kim decides to investigate for herself.