Most of the action takes place on the planet Spiegel: "This is Spiegel the notorious, known on a thousand thousand worlds as the sugar vampire, the grease magnet, and the home of the fat guys." The fair and cooking contest are held in the crater Wimpy (one of many small bits of wordplay in the novel). The planet has only a small permanent population that lives in the trading village Porky; the Fat Men are nearly always off looting other worlds of their sugar and grease. Norman, Steve, and the entire Magic Moscow restaurant are brought to Spiegel where they are paraded before a huge audience of fat people as the prizes of Sargon himself. They find themselves in the middle of a great fair, surrounded by glitter and gorgeous colors, among fat women with huge bouffant hairdos, and fat men in leisure suits and two-tone imitation leather...