Exploration Team

Huyghens is the only human on Loren Two, a world closed to settlement because of the sphexes, and his outpost there is completely illegal. He shares it with Semper, a bald eagle, and four mutated Kodiak bears who have learned to fight sphexes on their own terms.

Then a liner drops one passenger at his landing field by mistake: Roane, a Colonial Survey officer who has come to inspect a licensed robot colony, and whose job is sending men like Huyghens to prison. The robot colony has gone silent. If anyone there is still alive, the only way to reach them is weeks of travel through jungle and across the Sere Plateau, with a lawman, a colony-breaker and three tons of bear.