The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligentraces in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encounteredthe Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy-bears of Earth, theLeague's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had asimpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas--such assingle-handedly stopping an interstellar war.

Not that the fuzzy aliens were unfriendly. In fact, they loved everythingabout humans, and adopted various Terran cultures wholesale and in every littledetail--but with a bit of confusion about the differences between fact andfiction. So if the Hokas suddenly started acting out the parts in a rip-roaring,shoot-em-up western, or brought to life the London of Sherlock Holmes, completewith a pipe-puffing, deerstalker-wearing Hoka, or suddenly decided to fly theJolly Roger and lead a life of adventure and piracy on the high seas, matey,that was only to be expected. And as the Hokas threw themselves wholeheartedlyinto progressively wilder worlds from Terran history and fiction, Jones could beexcused for feeling that his grip on reality was hanging by a single, thin,increasingly frayed thread....