Late one night at the Imperial Science Institute of Tirol, Zor has awakened his mentor Cabell to show him his latest development. Having recalled the knowledge imparted to him by the Invid Regis on Optera, he has devised a device that will convert the bio-energy of the Flowers of Life into a form they can use to end the planet's energy shortage. Cabell fears that the Elders will use this energy to build an empire, but Zor says that for the sake of Tirol and his father, he has to do as Nimuul wishes.

Not long after this exchange, Zor's massive device--the Protoculture Matrix--has been created. The Elders watch as the machine is activated for the first time, not by the work of the red button Zor pushes, but by his sheer will. It begins producing Protoculture fuel in plasmic form. "There, my lords!" Zor tells the Elders. "I give you Protoculture! The means by which your dreams will come true!" As the Elders bask in the glory of the machine, Cabell voices his concern to Zor that with those dreams will come nightmares as well.

Shortly, the Elders conspire outside the Matrix chamber. The Protoculture is just what they need to fulfill their ambitions. "No longer will be be weak and helpless, dependent on the other worlds of the Local Group. Now we are the masters of our fate, able to shape whatever destiny we wish!" Nimuul gloats madly, remarking that now they will be capable of spreading their empire across the galaxy, even as far out as their long-untouchable parent world of Fantoma. The others ask Nimuul if Zor will object to their use of his discovery in this manner. "You needn't worry about Zor, my lords," he tells them. "As far as he is concerned, I have him exactly where I want him."

Through Protoculture, Tirol is rejuvenated. Meanwhile, Zor develops creatures to pollenate the Flowers. As he explains to Nimuul, "Since the Flowers of Life has been removed from their native habitat, their natural reproductive cycle has been broken. There are no Invid here to help the pollenation process. The symbiotic relationship has been disrupted." He further explains, "I've created substitute pollenators. If these genetic constructs restore the procreative balance, we'll be able to maintain a self-renewing supply of flowers in greenhouses." The idea of creating an organism for any particular purpose intrigues Nimmul; thus, Zor and Cabell are ordered to create a whole army of perfect slave clones, which are incorporated into every aspect of Tirolian life. They even create giant clones called Zentraedi to mine ore on Fantoma for a fleet of starships. However, as Nimuul indulges himself in the company of several shapely female clones, protestors gather outside Nimuul's chambers to voice their opposition to using the clones as slave labor. He orders the royal army of clone guards to quiet them with force.

The protestors regroup and, with the help of Arla's persuasive powers and some stolen police weapons, plan to get the support of Zor and free his imprisoned father Zol in order to sway the undecided of Tiresia to their side.

Zol awakens from a horrible nightmare to find that civilians are attacking the prison. Unfortunately, there are too many clone guards and the attackers are forced to fall back.

While in the middle of something involving him in bed with several attractive female clones, Nimuul is informed of the attempted break-in. A guardsman suggests that they need a bigger police force to handle this threat, and Nimuul gets an idea.

The rebels decide to attack the science institute in order to cut off the source of the Masters' power. While their leader insists that for this to succeed Zor must die, Arla decides to run ahead to the institute to warn him.

Meanwhile, Nimuul goes to the prison to tell Zol that in order to end the rebellion, he must die. "Would being a martyr be any better? The people won't stop, Nimuul. They'll fight on, even after I'm gone," he counters. However, Nimuul says that he wouldn't worry about the people.

As Arla rushes to the institute, Vard and Zor discuss the merits of Zor's discoveries. Vard argues that his discoveries are furthering the glory of the Tirolian people, but Zor tells him that he didn't intend for these discoveries to be used to create military might or slave labor. "Zor, we must have worlds to use as way-stations for our glorious expansion!" Vard tells him. Zor wonders what happened to his old friend. Just then, Arla arrives through the ventilation system. She and Zor embrace, and she warns him of the impending danger. "The underground's going to attack the institute any minute!" she says. "They think the only way to stop the Masters is to destroy the facility that supplies them with power. And destroy you along with it." Zor panics and leads her out of the institute, but realizes he's too late. The Zentraedi have arrived.

ARTWORK

The art itself is technically excellent--the character work is clean, sharp, and up to the Waltrips' usual high standards. The scenic design is sparse but properly stylized, the usual Tirolian mix of Greco-Roman elegance and generic rounded sci-fi high technology. However, the art layout and rhythm of the scenes is rather uninteresting. Much like earlier issues, lots of space is given to establishing shots--sometimes even establishing shots of buildings that have already been established, such as the rebels' meeting house on the outskirts of Tiresia. The one establishing shot that gets the most space, and in this case rightly so, though, is the Protoculture Matrix. It's an awfully bizarre-looking device, though it very much looks like something that, in a battered and overgrown state, could become the plant chamber seen in the latter half of the Masters episodes of the ROBOTECH TV series.

Notice that the Pollenators look a little more like the creature seen in episode 38 of ROBOTECH, "False Start" than their Sentinels animation selves.

Throughout Nimuul is overplayed much like Edwards in Sentinels. It strikes me as odd that in earlier issues he was much more of a collected schemer and ultimately he is to evolve into a calm, emotionless creature, like the Masters of the TV series, and yet here he played both visually and verbally as a cranky, decadent madman. It is also worth noting that his co-conspirators, the other two elders (presumably Hespis and Fallagar) are drawn rather sketchily and aren't characterized very well. In fact, they are given the same unexpressive slit-eyes as the clones.

Finally, the monitor screens throughout have an extremely Star Trek: The Next Generation Federation starship-styled look to them, almost to the point that I think Paramount could sue if we weren't talking about a reasonably obscure decade-old comic book series. The lineart on them is sometimes fine to the point that it's unclear, and the text is done in one of those horrible weird-looking fonts that are supposed to pass for alien language but are actually in English (though "Zentraedi" is misspelled as "Zentreadi" on page 10). Either do funny-looking alien symbols or do English, but please, none of this half-assed stuff.