In 2548 the Council of Ruling Houses of Earth lost the hundred years War of Colonial Independence. It was an economic disaster for Earth when the colonies won their freedom since each one represented a major investment by the Ruling Houses and a principal source of their income. According to the treaty made at the end of the war, however, Earth government could sign a new charter with any colony interested in continuing its economic relationship. This is the story of one team sent by Earth to reestablish contact and open negotiations with a colony that had been “lost” during the long war.

The colony is on Eoshia, an Earth-like planet located on the outer fringes of human exploration. Although the initial survey of the planet discovered an enormous ancient alien city, there were no longer any sentient beings and so the planet was opened to human colonization. The only group of colonials interested in living so far from the human galactic hub was a primitive agrarian society that actually wanted to be isolated. They not only survived on their own during the years of the Colonial War, but also managed to thrive without technological assistance or other help from Earth.

The planet Eoshia usually has two moons, but occasionally there is a third moon-like body in the sky. This third moon is a large asteroid in an elliptical orbit looping around the sun and then back around Eoshia on a trip that takes more than five hundred planetary years. The combined gravity of three moons exerts geological stresses that gradually change the planet’s climate, raising the temperature and increasing rainfall. This happens because of tectonic activity, volcanic emissions that add significant amounts of CO² to the atmosphere. The increased CO² enhances to the greenhouse effect, trapping more heat in the planet’s atmosphere. The higher temperatures in turn affect the planet’s ecological.

The organisms that evolved in sync with Eoshia’s unusually long cycle include one sentient race with a complex life cycle. When the third moon is in the sky, they inhabit physical bodies and live in the great city. But this only happens every 500 years or so. As the third moon moves away, conditions on the planet’s surface become harsh and the physical bodies die off, but the natives continue to live as purely mental beings within something they call Unity. In this way, their consciousness is actually unified rather than individual. Like some social animals on Earth, ants and bees for example, their entire population can be considered as a single organism, because, despite many bodies, they are connected to and part of only one mind.

The only native Eoshians who remain in physical form during the long cold years are a caste of guardians that the Earth colonists named lamia. These guardians extend their lives because of their exposure to a unique substance that exists only on Eoshia, and by existing in partial hibernation until the third moon is back in the sky when they prepare everything for the return of the Eoshians. The guardians are huge winged, furred hexapods (2 arms, 2 legs, 2 wings). They are nocturnal, and a combination of fierce warriors whose job is to defend the new population until they are prepared to take their place in the city, and nurturers whose job it is to oversee the hatching of the new physical bodies and their integration with Unity.

Needless to say, the guardians are not too happy with the appearance of human colonists on their world, but this relative discomfort is nothing compared to their rage when the humans discover and begin to destroy a substance – a golden crystal that is a catalyst vital to the integration of the new Eoshians with Unity. To humans the substance has a mixed effect. Since it is a component --- a very minute component -- of the air and soil of Eoshia, humans on the planet are exposed to it all the time. Although its effect on sensitives, such as the medical empath assigned to the original colony, are more intense, in such low doses the substance acts on any normal human merely subliminally. For example, their dreams are more vivid. This is nothing notable, however. The other effect of this catalyst on humans is to extend their lives. How long is not known, but when the contact team from Earth arrives on Eoshia, they find many of the original colonists are still alive and thriving. Considering the colony’s primitive medical care, a life spanning more than 100 years is quite astonishing.

The humans’ vivid dreams are caused by a slight contact with Unity, a contact too negligible to make any real difference in their consciousness. However, exposure to large amounts of this Eoshian substance, a golden-colored organic crystal that is designed to facilitate the new Eoshian natives’ linking with Unity, is more than a normal human mind can encompass. The resulting mental chaos causes disorientation, debilitating psychosis, and eventual death. Because of this, several caches are ruthlessly destroyed when they were found in the area of the city that the colonists wanted to modify for their own use.

During the initial surveys of the planet, samples of the substance were retrieved and returned to Earth for analysis. At this time, the humans involved protected themselves from contamination ... in other words, scouts investigating a new planet weren’t about to expose themselves to an unknown and possibly dangerous substance. Anything they retrieved was handled remotely and safely sealed. Away from Eoshia, the substance has a completely different effect on human beings. Distanced from Unity, there are no mental side effects and the golden crystals act merely as a potent rejuvenation and life extension drug. The substance is immediately classified, double classified utmost top secret, and whisked out of sight and mind into the labyrinthine bowels of governmental top security. The few people who know of its existence, source, and effects are highly motivated to get more of it, but unfortunately the outbreak of war makes this impossible. Ultimately only four groups know of the substance. Two of them are on Eoshia, the colonists and the scientists there. The other two are a certain subgroup of Earth’s more paranoid intelligence forces, and a mirror group attached to the Proxima Empire. This multi-planet empire is one of the most powerful oligarchies to arise during the War of Colonial Independence.

And so, in 2551 the team from Earth comes to Eoshia, when the third moon is beginning to show in the heavens. As they proceed with their negotiations with the colonists, they learn that there are now three separate groups from Earth on the planet. One is the original colony consisting of the largest population. The second are a company of scientists that initially came with the colony to study the planet and the great Eoshian city. The third faction consists of outcasts from the colony, people who are banished because they have been exposed to the Eoshian crystals and are considered contagious. This group is in the care of a medical empath named Becca who came with the colony, but who was banished when she too became contaminated by the crystals. As an empath, she is sensitive to Unity, but her training has enabled her to maintain some kind of mental equilibrium, although the other colonists consider her a bit stranger than normal. Normal people who are exposed linger for a while, slowly slipping deeper into some kind of psychosis (contact with Unity), until their bodies eventually give out and they die.