Time and again...
colonists on a new world would struggle with untamed wilderness, endure incredible privation, expend their utmost effort to pay off the "First Mortgage" on their virgin planet. Then would come the developers, company men, intent on transforming yet another wildnerness planet into a second-rate, raped and polluted imitation Earth. It always happened that way. But not this time -- not if Mattie, Cary, and Charlie could stop them! Of course, Mattie was a nineteen-year-old girl, Cary an ignorant backwoodsman, and Charlie a swamp otter who carved things with his teeth -- and against them stood the resources of a hundred worlds...