Only the infinite historical experiences of teeming Terra offered a guide to the problems to be faced by the future imitators of Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook.

This was very obvious in the case of the fifth planet-colony to be visited by the recontact ship "Daedalus". For the struggle for food had become bitter and hard and the main human colony there had slid back to grim fundamentals. The Earth parallel lay in the presence, across an "impassable" ocean of another continent, another human colony, long isolated and alienated. The solution was there - the voyage had to rival that of Colombus - and all the clever science brought from faraway Earth was no substitute for old-fashioned courage and pioneering risk.

Ecology, psychology, and oceanography supply the framework that makes BALANCE OF POWER memorable - and timely.