On the colony world of Eire, an absurd legend has become a matter of survival. Tiny but ruinous dinies chew through wood, steel, tools, roads, tractors, and even the machinery that keeps the settlement alive, while President O'Hanrahan struggles to hide the truth from Sean O'Donohue, a hard-driving Earth inspector convinced the colony is a disgrace. The secret defense is even stranger: black snakes, revived by Captain Patrick Brannicut, who prove far more effective at hunting the creatures than any ordinary trap or cat. As the crisis deepens, Moira O'Donohue makes the breakthrough that changes everything. She discovers the dinies are drawn to iron and can be rendered torpid by cold, turning a desperate nuisance into something the colony can manage. A visit to McGillicuddy Island reveals the beasts' enormous, prehistoric scale and the comic danger of their attraction to metal, while a chaotic street scene in Tara sends Sean from outrage to humiliation as the colony's bizarre ecology erupts around him. In the end, Eire's future depends on ingenuity, blarney, and a practical reworking of St. Patrick's snake legend. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
