Fourteen-year-old Stephanie Harrington and her fellow Provisional Forest Rangers on the planet Sphinx must prevent disaster from befalling a treecat clan caught in a blaze while preserving the secret that the treecats of Sphinx are highly intelligent and deserving of rights that some would deny them.

"Freshly home from an internship on Manticore, teenaged Stephanie Harrington is up to her eyebrows in trouble. There's the new treecat adoptee who needs to be kept from becoming a risk to the carefully guarded secret of just how smart the arboreal inhabitants of Sphinx really are. There's the overeager journalist whose campaign to protect the treecats from exploitation as the newest, coolest pet on any planet could threaten the very creatures he seeks...