Shrouded — perpetually shrouded — by a dense blanket of clouds, the planet Nidor made its slow, stately way through space. Its orbit swept such unthinkably vast reaches of the cosmos that a year on Nidor was equal to almost 3,000 Earth-years. A warm and watery world, Nidor impressed the Earthmen who discovered it as a planet where change was almost unimaginable.

They were absolutely right. To the average Nidorian, change was unthinkable. His life followed the same pattern as his father's —and his father's life had followed the same pattern as his father's. Any deed or idea not authorized by the Scriptures was taboo; all decisions pertaining to religion or government were made by the Council of Elders, whose highest and only aim was to lead the people in the ways of their Ancestors. Life on Nidor was pleasant and placid; progress on Nidor was virtually unknown.

The arrival of the Earthmen, then, was the biggest thing that had happened to Nidor in thousands of years. Even so, the Nidorian-in-the-street would have preferred to treat the event as a subject for idle tavern- gossip, a morsel of news to be chewed over a bit, then shrugged off and forgotten. If a decision had to be made, it was up to the Council of Elders to make it—that was the Nidorian philosophy.

Somehow, though, Earthmen are never that easy to shrug off and forget. Particularly these Earthmen, who claimed to come from the Great Light Himself, and who insisted that a new, different, and Earthman-supervised school had to be established near the Holy City of Gelusar—in spite of the fact that a perfectly adequate school existed in the city already.

Thus the Bel-rogas School of Divine Law was born. And thus, for the first time in many millenia, change came to the planet Nidor.

The changes were small at first—small and, at worst, apparently harmless. Only the brightest youths on Nidor were accepted by the Bel-rogas School. They studied the Law and the Scriptures, as their Ancestors always had. But, they also studied science. . .

Kiv peGanz Brajjyd studied the hugl, the tiny but savage animals that periodically plagued the Nidorian famners and destroyed their crops. For centuries, the hugl had been kept under control by use of the Edris powder. Now, a new and hardier variety appeared, and threatened to engulf all plant life on the planet. With the help of the Earthman Jones, Kiv figured out how to conquer the menace—and more important, how to convince the Elders that his solution should be used.

A small change and a good one, the total extermination of the hugl? So it seemed at first. But what about the Edris manufacturers who were thrown into bankruptcy, when Edris was no longer needed . . .?

And so it went. The Earthmen didn’t actually make any changes themselves, but somehow, under their influence, the basic economic and social structures of the entire planet began to sway, and stagger, and perhaps to topple. . .

For Nidorians, it was a problem. But it was an unprecedented problem, and there was nothing in the ways of their Ancestors to help them find a solution. The solution could only be found by one strong, determined and disillusioned man—a man brilliant enough to be accepted as a student at the Bel-rogas school, but a man non-conformist enough to be the only student expelled by the School in its decades of existence when he saw that it was doing wrong and said so in public.

Norvis peRahn Brajjyd—the grandson of Kiv peGanz—was that man. But he was only one man—one man against the Elders, against the Earthmen. and against the very people he most wanted to help. What could he do?

What he could do, and what he did, makes up the climax of this novel—but only the climax. For The Shrouded Planet is a big novel, one that paints in finely-etched detail the entire history of Nidor from the time the Earthmen came until Norvis achieved his first major triumph against the old order. In between, it's packed with fascinating characters and tense situations. Reading it, you'll get to know and sympathize with at least a dozen unique individuals— and with a unique planet as well.

The Shrouded Planet is more than just another novel—it's an experience!