urally. Or had it?

The planet had a very simple history. From the very beginning there
had never been anything of real commercial interest on Anvhar. Well
off the interstellar trade routes, there were no minerals worth
digging and transporting the immense distances to the nearest
inhabited worlds. Hunting the winter beasts for their pelts was a
profitable but very minor enterprise, never sufficient for mass
markets. Therefore no organized attempt had ever been made to
colonize the planet. In the end it had been settled completely by
chance. A number of offplanet scientific groups had established
observation and research stations, finding unlimited data to observe
and record during Anvhar's unusual yearly cycle. The long-duration
observations encouraged the scientific workers to bring their
families and, slowly but steadily, small settlements grew up. Many
of the fur hunters settled there as well, adding to the small
population. This had been the beginning.

Few records existed of those early days, and the first six centuries
of Anvharian history were more speculation than fact. The Breakdown
occurred about that time, and in the galaxy-wide disruption Anvhar
had to fight its own internal battle. When the Earth Empire
collapsed it was the end of more than an era. Many of the
observation stations found themselves representing institutions that
no longer existed. The professional hunters no longer had markets
for their furs, since Anvhar possessed no interstellar ships of its
own. There had been no real physical hardship involved in the
Breakdown as it affected Anvhar, since the planet was completely
self-sufficient. Once they had made the mental adjustment to the
fact that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection of
casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued unchanged.
Not easy--living on Anvhar is never easy--but at least without
difference on the surface.

The thoughts and attitudes of the people were, however, going
through a great transformation. Many attempts were made to develop
some form of stable society and social relationship. Again, little
record exists of these early trials, other than the fact of their
culmination in the Twenties.

To understand the Twenties, you have to understand the unusual orbit
that Anvhar tracks around its sun, 70 Ophiuchi. There are other
planets in this system, all of them more or less conforming to the
plane of the ecliptic. Anvhar is obviously a rogue, per