This two-volume book includes The Expedition. The Survivors: Mark and Kim are sent to Betelgeuse to look for survivors of the spacecraft crash that killed 3,000 people seven years earlier. Two survivors tell them the colonisers had been divided over whether the indigenous creatures called Lums are as intelligent as humans. If they are, the humans would have been forced by law to abandon their colonising enterprise. Kim decides to investigate for herself. The Expedition: Kim and her team have gone off into Betelgeuse's deepest canyons to investigate Logan and Menegaz's claims. They discover that danger can come from the most unexpected sources.