witches, asks them to also transport a frightening rocky mass and the catatonic witch found with it. All is not as it seems aboard the Evening Bird. Vezzarn and one of the passengers, Hulik do Eldel, are spying and creeping around the ship in an attempt to locate the Drive. However, Vezzarn uncovers the mystery mass, thereby attracting ominous yellow tendrils of insanity called Worm Weather. The captain is having increasingly odd interactions with an immensely powerful alien presence called a , which seems to be manipulating events and watching with glee. Then the second passenger, Laes Yango, drugs everyone on board and redirects the ship for his purposes: he is actually the leader of a feared fleet of space pirates in the Chaladoor, and he is also after the Sheewash Drive. When the Worm Weather attacks, the decides to interfere and they are able to land the ship on a seemingly deserted red planet. The captain, Goth, Vezzarn, and Hulik defeat Yango and his murderous giant spider-robot before taking off once again for space. The is delighted in the captain's cleverness, and sends him on the next leg of what it calls a game. As a ghost-like projection, the captain is sent to talk to Cheel, the leader-in-hiding of an enormous interdimensional space ship that has been taken over by its insane computer. The captain learns that the computer wants to conquer all known space, using the Worms as its advance guard, and their only salvation is that mystery mass. The group is reunited when the transports them all to Karres, but 50,000 years in the past. The captain continues to refine his powers, including how to grab and manipulate small amounts of the black energy. When the Leewit shows up – thrown through space and time by the – Goth and the captain learn that the witches of Karres have attacked the Worm World. The two girls and the captain are transported by the to the mad computer's temple/throne room. There they use their witch powers to destroy the computer and its machine minions. Cheel then emerges to retake the Worm World space ship using the mystery mass, but he has no intention of returning to his home dimension and instead proclaims his intent to conquer all. The is elated by the trick, until the captain hooks and manipulates its energy in order to send the former Worm