abstract
| - The planet orbits within the habitable zone of its parent star, and bears substantial bodies of water, an atmosphere that is amenable to humans, and landmasses covered by green foliage. A rain forest ecology in at least one region of Beemela 4 sustains lush tree-like plants and robust animal life. Beemela 4 was once home to an indigenous technological civilization that practiced animal domestication, sculpture, and stone architecture. Around the year 1800, a mission was sent to Beemela 4 by the planet Iscandar as part of its goal of bringing "salvation to all life in the universe." The native people treated the mission with a measure of reverence, placing a wave motion core and data storage device from the crashed Iscandar ship inside a temple-like structure nearby. The civilization collapsed about seventy years later and its people were driven to extinction. One of the Beemelarians' livestock, a large insect-like species capable of flight, escaped the fall of its masters, thrived in the wild, and evolved into aggressive forest-dwelling creatures. In the year 2199, Beemela 4 remains mostly untouched. The Great Garmillas Empire knows of the planet but has little interest in it. The Earth ship Yamato identifies Beemela 4 as a potential source of food and water to replenish its depleted stocks, and as a place to complete repairs following a ferocious battle. A portion of the Yamato crew goes further and sees Beemela 4 as a second home for humanity, and attempts a mutiny in order to return to Earth and begin relocating human survivors from their own ravaged world. As the mutiny unfolds and eventually fails, a landing party enters the temple and finds the wave motion core, brings it back to Yamato, and uses it in their continuing quest to reach Iscandar ("Point of No Return", "A Choice for the Future").
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