Haviland Tuf takes his newly-acquired seedship, which he has named the "Ark", to the world of S'uthlam (an anagram for Malthus) for extensive repairs. S'uthlam is a world on the verge of war with all of the nearby inhabited worlds, as it requires a constant flow of resources to the planet. This is due to the world's continuing population explosion, a result of the S'uthlamese religious belief that unfettered and unchecked human reproduction will one day lead to a world of gods. This is in spite of evidence that this population explosion will lead, as it has many times in the past, to famine and S'uthlamese attempts at military conquest of adjoining star systems.