Nathaniel and his crew land on planet Ninosa, home of the Ninos, pale-skinned, black-haired hominids. Ninosa is largely a windless desert of white clay, white sand, and white salt. The few tree trunks and roots are also white and often resemble twisted stacks of pizza boxes or Styrofoam cup sleeves. The palm-like fronds are indigo. The large fruits are puffy and hollow. Ninosa is also home to brown, sticky, carnivorous ferns and various herbivores. Due to the sparse biomass, Ninos live in white cities of artificial wood and eat factory-made food compounds. Most everything is powered by energy crystals, which create energy out of nothing. Ninos use a time-based currency. The value of goods and services is proportional to the time it takes to supply them, with no consideration for the costs of energy or anything else.

In places too rough for roads, the Ninos use flying cars with propellers front and back. Many vehicles are designed for multiple purposes, including helicopter airplanes, helicopter boats, helicopter submarines, and helicopter spaceships. The Ninos have mostly flat spaceships shaped as squares, hexagons, or octagons. Patrol robots have propellers on their heads.

The prime library on Ninosa is enormous. The four explorers spend a lot of time there. One day, they hear a scream and run to investigate. All they find is a stain on the carpet. They call the police, who end up closing off that section of the library. “This is the second attack like this. Until we figure out what’s going on, the library isn’t safe,” the officer says.

“What is the stain of?” Nathaniel asks.

“Blood, bones, and organs completely dissolved by a strong acid mixture. It looks like their body fluids boiled from the inside out,” the officer replies. Typical of many Ninosan uniforms, the police wear boots, briefs, and little else. Badges are fused to their skin. Over one hand, they wear a sock-like accessory capable of firing bursts of quasi-coherent infrared radiation.

“What could contain such a strong acid?” Nathaniel asks.

“We’re investigating that,” the officer says.

Captain Nathaniel and his crew land on planet Snarugi, home of the Snarugi people. Snarugi have three body sections, each with two limbs and surrounded by a transparent globe. One globe is filled with chlorine gas, one is filled with formaldehyde gas, and one is filled with ammonia gas. Snarugi have extremely complex biochemistry allowing them to metabolize almost any compound. They are an entire ecosystem unto themselves.

The Snarugi have an energy-based currency, where the value of goods and services is proportional only to the amount of energy it took to supply them, ignoring the costs of time, inconvenience, expertise, benefit to the consumer, and other factors.

Hearing of a new planet discovered far beyond the aerogel asteroid belt, having colors never before seen in history (fluorescents), Captain Nathaniel and his crew join a team of color wizards to extract, concentrate, and ship the new colors. Being so far away, it will take their ship three years to get there, so they go with the Snarugi, who can reach it in nine days.

The new planet has three biomes. Sixty percent of the surface is fluorescent rock, worn in places by extreme winds (there are even wind caves). These plains are inhabited by glittery blobs of fixed but flexible shapes. They nest in the same crevices every night and fit them perfectly. Thirty percent of the planet is “ice stick” forest. Columns of ice roughly the same height jut straight up from the ground, leaving just enough space between them to squeeze through if one takes a circuitous route. Ten percent of the planet is fir forest. These firs have fluorescent, spiral cones. Mouse-sized fluorescent dinosaurs live there. These three biomes exist wrapped around each other on small scales, but with sharp boundaries.

The Snarugi use trazer beams as drills and trazonic shielding for protection from the wind. Trazers are electromagnetic in nature, but the photons are combined differently than in lasers, giving them a silvery look. Trazers can be powerful weapons, but as it turns out not powerful enough for what awaits them on this planet…

Girl play and boy play are incompatible. Stuffians exposed to the wrong kind of play will experience fun poisoning. Boys and girls hate each other and adults are annoyed by the sounds of all play, yet they all have the same needs for commerce and resources, so girls, boys, and adults often live in the same regions of the same planets, though they often live in different sections of the cities or even in different cities. They share infrastructure but have different media. Thus it happens that the girls are able to plan a surprise attack on the boys without them knowing.

It is Nathaniel’s fourth birthday. He should be celebrating. Instead, he is in a courtroom on planet Kakro. Sitting down, he carefully places his tail through the back of his chair in great pain. It will be a while before it heals. Around the room are five Kakro adults. They have gumdrop-like bodies and glide like snails. A single, jointed arm extends from the lower front of their bodies while a thin, jointed neck extends from the upper front, tipped by a large eye and three straight horns. They are weird creatures. “Let the trial of Captain Nathaniel the Dromaeosaur begin,” adult one says.

“What are the charges?” adult two asks.

“Theft, vandalism, threats, and murder,” adult three says.

“That’s not what happened!” Nathaniel protests.

“Then tell us what really happened,” adult two commands, and so Nathaniel begins his tale: