 He is doing a two-year stint as a field guide to tourists from his and other nations who are visiting the Park to see the plants and animals there.During one of those tours, a military officer of the "Kingdom of Morgaf" (real-world Britain and Ireland) is killed by one of the other tourists in his party.Radnal must call higher authorities to investigate the matter, and in the course of their investigation, they determine that the deceased man had a microprint in his effects outlining a plot by another nation to set off a "starbomb" (nuclear weapon) near the "Barrier Mountains" (a range of mountains joining the Sierra Nevada and the Rif across where the real-world Strait of Gibraltar is), thereby setting off one of the many geologic faults in the area, knocking a gap in the mountains, and reflooding the Bottomlands to form a new central sea, instigated apparently by Krepalga (a "Homo sapiens" nation occupying all or part of the Middle East, which would have benefited by having a real-world-type Mediterranean Sea up to its west border).