Gilgram Zinder and Abu Ben Yulin constructed "Obie", a sentient supercomputer, building it in Markovian fashion directly into Trelig's resort planetoid, New Pompeii. Obie is a supercomputer hooked up to a Matter/Energy/Matter converter and planted inside a planetoid big enough to house a small town. He can give you anything you want, as long as he knows how to make it, and has a big enough transmitter capable of altering entire planets to a person's specifications. He's also capable of traveling to anywhere he knows the coordinates of within minutes.

After a showdown between Mavra's party and Yulin's party, the survivors of Mavra's party agreed to a truce with Yulin and returned in the ship to Obie. In addition to Mavra and Yulin, the other members of the party were Renard, a Yugash, a Bozog (another northern species, they moved the ship from the non-tech hex it landed in to their own high-tech hex), a Lata (a southern species resembling a pixie) named Vistaru (previously Vardia Diplo), and a Yaxa (a southern species resembling a giant butterfly) named Wooley (previously Wu Julee and Kally Tonge). Once they arrived, Ben Yulin attempted to take over Obie, but the computer assisted Mavra and the others in destroying the circuit that forces Obie to obey Yulin. Obie returned to human space, and when a Council fleet arrived to destroy him, he faked his own destruction and departed with Mavra to explore the rest of the universe as partners.