- Published: 1981
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, 1982 —
- Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1983 —
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, 1983 —
The first volume of the Chanur saga, set in the Alliance-Union universe, featuring the alien crew of spaceship The Pride of Chanur and the human Tully. No one at Meetpoint Station had ever seen a creature like the Outsider. Naked-hided, blunt toothed and blunt-fingered, Tully was the sole surviving member of his company of humans―a communicative, spacefaring species hitherto unknown―and he was a prisoner of his discoverers and captors―the sadistic, treacherous kif―until his escape onto the hani ship, The Pride of Chanur. Little did he know when he threw himself upon the mercy of The Pride and her crew that he put the entire hani species in jeopardy and imperiled the peace of the Compact itself...for the information this fugitive held could be the ruin or glory of any of the species at Meetpoint Station.