wounded. Seeking a burial site, they land on the planet Marmola, but find its marble composition impossible to dig. They are ambushed by bandits who seek the planet's hidden treasure, a secret guarded by the giant eagle-like Gangez, and use Antigrea's remains as bait to capture him. Loosing their bonds they overwhelm the bandits, and pledge themselves to the now-dying Gangez who by eating her has become Antigrea's sepulchre. Gangez leads them to the planet's only fertile valley, where they bury him, and his spirit leads them to the planet's treasure: a subterranean reservoir of epiphyte, a substance that defies gravity. Summoning the Techno robots he cast into space on their first raid, Dayal develops the valley into a city for his caste. Dayal takes ship back to Thor-Thougah with his daughters, seeking sires for them. En route, it emerges that Narda's brain and Myrtha's ovaries have sustained tumours that will rapidly kill them both. With their consent, Dayal has the robots graft Narda's lower body to Myrtha's upper body. Upon arrival in Thor-Thougah, the resulting being confronts the sole survivor of the Technos' assault on the asteroid. He agrees to impregnate her followed by a fight to the death, but when bested he takes his own life, asking to be remembered by his unborn progeny. Berard concludes his tale by revealing that he is the child of that union, and he welcomed Othon (a fugitive pirate) seeing in him a trace of his own father. Othon is now ready to receive the mark of the Metabarons (the absorbed spirit of Gangez, worn as a mark on the chest) from his father-in-law. Main saga The main saga of the Metabarons begins on Marmola, on which Berard's tribe export huge blocks of marble. The existence of the epiphyte has been kept secret by the Castakas for many generations, until its revelation to save the life of Othon von Salza, the son-in-law of Baron Berard. Soon after the revelation of the epiphyte, the planet's orbit becomes a battlefield, with the treacherous Imperial Black Endoguard as the victors. At the end of the war, Othon and his son Bari are the only survivors of the Castaka tribe. The Imperial couple, rulers of the known galaxy, are astonished by the achievement of Othon and reward him; and Othon shows them where the epiphyte was hidden in exchange for a percentage of the new market