Stranded on Earth, Carthok posed as Sir Nikolas Valentine, a scholar, landowner, and astrologer, his craft disguised as his house. Over the next thirty years, he abducted many humans of high intelligence and drained them of their life energies to aid his ship in repairing itself. He did this by using homing beacons disguised as playing cards. These would scan each human, drawing the collective unconsciousness of his previous victims to the target, which would then teleport them to his ship.