There is great tension in the ant colony since something special is going on in the Council. Nac, "the voice of practicality," and Kar, "the voice of idealism," are preparing for the critical Council debate on whether to authorize continued development of the thermofungal energy technology which could get out of control in only an instant and destroy them all but which its proponents argue is essential and safe since no accidents will ever happen because their kind are too smart and careful to allow them. Personalities, ambitions, facts, unknowables, and deliberate distractions and distortions are involved as the colony's major players face off to debate whether anything their kind can do they should do or whether some things are too dangerous to risk doing. Outside the Council Chamber the security forces search far and wide through the ant hill for the group of dissenters calling themselves the "Movement to Save our Colony" (MSC) who are suspected, correctly, of planning to destroy the essential fungal spores kept in guarded locations and thereby make further development of that dangerous technology impossible. The situation becomes desperate and the questions academic when there is an fungal spore accident with resulting devastation and only the MSC have the essential chemical material to prevent complete disaster.