Foreword...

The planet was old, even then. It was covered by warm, almost-tideless seas and shallow lagoons, with the occasional low island on which grew gracefully twisted trees and the odd sombre shrub. It was a cloudy world, with no agriculture, no science, no industry. It wove a complicated and not entirely stable orbit around and about its three suns...
     The Plarithdi, who had first discovered it, called it Vl'ag - "worthless" - gazed around with a mixture of fear and disgust, and left with considerable despatch. The natives, bemused, waited for someone with more... vision to arrive.
     They were not disappointed. Their next visitors were the Rusc who, enchanted by a world so unlike their own, named it Fohmatraa - "dreaming" - and opened their hearts and their minds to their new friends. And the Fohmatraans, who had always *called* each other by their unique telepathic mentity (their mental identity) since they had no spoken language of their own, proceeded with great delight to take Rusciin words and images to create vocal names for themselves.
     But all this is ancient history. It's well-known that the Fohmatraans, being the most skilled telepaths in the Known Worlds, became perhaps the Collective's most highly valued species, greatly in demand wherever sentients gathered - and not just for their telepathic and communicative skills. They were, without exception, graceful, lean and powerful, with huge felinoid eyes, long soft manes, an intense desire for communication in all forms, and an insatiable curiosity about the minds - and mores - of others. And their reputation for delivering the ultimate in erotic fulfilment soon became legendary.
     The entire race numbered only about two million. There simply weren't enough of them to go round!

Far across the galaxy, almost diametrically opposite Fohmatraa and very isolated and alone amongst what the rest of Haadri called the Burned Worlds, was a small, fertile, primitive world of two moons. It was too close to the area claimed as homespace by the Othxero-Sarond Alliance for the rest of the civilised galaxy to have noticed its existence, and in any case its humanoid dominant order was not yet sufficiently evolved to even be aware that they shared their homeworld with another, similar species, let alone that there were other sentient beings in existence. They believed themselves to be the pinnacle of creation. Quite what their response would be when they discovered otherwise is anyone's guess...

Forward to Chapter One ->