title: The End of the Matter
text: # The End of the Matter
  
  The End of the Matter (1977) is a science fiction novel by American writer Alan Dean Foster. The book is fourth chronologically in the Pip and Flinx series.
  
  ## Plot summary
  
  The novel takes place immediately after Orphan Star with Flinx taking his new space ship, the Teacher, built by the Ulru-Ujurrians, to Alaspin, the home planet of his minidrag Pip, in search of the man who bid on him when Flinx was a child in a slave auction.
  
  He not only finds this man, Skua September, but also acquires a strange new alien pet, Abalamahalamatandra (Ab for short), and is pursued by an assassin squad called the Qwarm. Flinx's friends Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex show up looking for Ab in the hope of finding an ancient weapon, thought to possibly be capable of stopping a rogue black hole, before the three inhabited planets on the black hole's course are sucked in.
  
  