The planet New Kashubia started out as a Jovian gas giant, but when its sun went supernova, the lighter elements in it were blasted into interstellar space. All that was left was a ball of heavy metals, heated to 8,000 degrees. As it cooled, something akin to zone refining took place, with tungsten solidifying first at the surface, then layers of the other metals and alloys continuing down to a ball of mercury at the center. The sun meanwhile evolved into a pulsar, a neutron star with a deadly beam of radiation that baked the planet's surface twice a year. The New Kashubians lived inside the planet, in tunnels drilled in a thousand foot thick layer of solid gold.

Still without carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, or even dirt, they were the poorest people in the universe.

But when New Kashubia combined virtual reality with tank warfare, giving its warriors a close symbiosis with their intelligent tanks, neither war nor the galaxy would ever be the same. Not to mention sex . . .