Colorful Creatures, Friends, and Dangerous Forests Everywhere

During the final lab of her junior year of interplanetary veterinary school, Taje nearly gets stuck inside a surgical patient much larger than herself. Her spirits lift though, as she and Giem are assigned an externship on the exquisite planet of Enchantment. Its landscape is pockmarked with craters lined with flower rings where the brilliantly colored crater pups live. They are hunted, captured, and quarantined for the popular and lucrative pet market. Taje and Giem must help in the Quarantine Stations. But the two vet students soon discover the import/export business is far less than ethical, and the hunting is likely to upset the crater ecology. When they speak out about this, the whole planet turns against them. Will they be able to save the crater pups and escape back to school on Olecranon unscathed?