Brant was a scientist, a space scientist. He had techniques and technologies at his fingertips that would have looked like magic to the old timers of the twentieth century. There were new sciences that hadn't been heard of a century before. Things like Teleportology and Psycholithography. The specialised departmental scientists were narrow field experts in spheres of work that a twentieth century man wouldn't even have begun to comprehend. Science had the answer to most things, but there was a new world out through the Hyperdrive Lanes, a world of mystery on the edge of the universe. It was inhabited by ebony skinned humanoids, with proud noble chieftains and weird La-akas or medicine men. Brant and his crew scoffed at first. "Primitive magic and superstition" laughed the scientists. Then the La-akas did things that science couldn't' explain. Things like controlling nature. Brant and his men began to investigate the age of the culture. It wasn't primitive, it was old.... thousands of years older than Earth.... And it throbbed with terrible danger.