On the planet Karimon lives a race of intelligent beings descended from reptiles. Like most intelligent beings in the galaxy, they had not yet evolved beyond their stone-age villages when the first shiploads of Men arrived to stake a claim on a virgin planet.

But on Karimon there is a strong, brilliant leader, a chief who is able to understand that the new arrivals are not gods or demons, but mortal beings. And unlike the inhabitants of most primitive planets, this leader also understood that Men had enemies too, and that those enemies could be used to gain some measure of control over the human colonization of Karimon. If only for a few short years.