As the most gifted battle unit in the Confraternity of Sentient Races, Five-Red is entitled to nothing but the best: the best bunk, the best food, and the best pleasure units 'Tween has to offer. That is as it should be. But on campaign planet B-335, he discovers a piece of alien technology that turns his life upside down. It holds the thoughts of a supposedly unthinking beast--a member of the very race the Confraternity's army has been sent out to exterminate. Suddenly, he knows the Confraternity's computer is eliminating intelligent races and, with that knowledge, he becomes a hunted man. Yet the Confraternity must be stopped. The alternative is the extinction of every intelligent race throughout the multiverse.