As the story begins, interplanetary commerce is plagued by pirates. The fleet of these pirates is led by Gray Roger, a surviving Adept of North Polar Jupiter. Unbeknownst to the Patrol, Gray Roger is actually Gharlane of Eddore. The pirate fleet and the Triplanetary Patrol are in the midst of a large scale engagement when an alien race known as the Nevians show up. The Nevians are the dominant, amphibious race of the planet Nevia, located many light years distant from the Sun. Their planet is desperately short of iron, so they set out with a spaceship to try to obtain more.
The Nevians decide that humans are inferior beings, and carve up both fleets using a ray that extracts every atom of free or combined iron in both sides' ships and personnel into a red, liquid "allotropic iron". The iron is used by the Nevians to power their interstellar ships and their power plants at home. The use of this ray means the death of nearly every person in both fleets. Roger survives the battle and flees to start a new operation on a distant world.
