Volume 7 of the collected works of James H. Schmitz. Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous! Pausert thought he had made good with his battered starship, successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes no one else could sell. And then he made the mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). No good deed goes unpunished, and those harmless-looking young ladies were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure.