“You okay?”

Leo nodded meekly back at Kat. It was okay. He would be okay. Just breathe. Float like a balloon. He steadied himself. “What happened here?” he asked.

“The Aykari,” Baz said. “The Djarik. They’re what happened.”

Only days ago Leo would have protested the pirate lumping the two aliens together, but taking in this desolate landscape, he didn’t try to argue. Kat had spoken of those caught in the middle—this was clearly part of the middle. Leo surveyed the remnants of civilization lying before him. Hollowed buildings made of beige stone and blushing pink brick, their facades cracked or crumbling or just plain gone. Roads strewn with refuse and rock, almost impossible to navigate in spots. Everywhere Leo looked there were signs of devastation, but no smoke, no fire. This damage had been done some time ago. Directly to his right, a giant sinkhole had formed, swallowing most of the building that had unfortunately once stood above it.

Leo thought of frozen gumballs. Of black-and-white tiled floors. Of acts of God.

“This place is a dump,” Skits said. “Why did your father send us to such a trash heap?”

“It does seem like an unusual place to find someone who could help save the galaxy,” Kat seconded. “The place looks abandoned. I don’t see anyone. Or anything.”

“Could be hiding. The scans said there was life here somewhere,” Baz said. “We just have to find it.”

They moved slowly, Baz in the lead, Leo consciously keeping himself between Kat and the Queleti, who couldn’t possibly be cold out here but who cinched his Yunkai tighter around him just the same. They passed what appeared to be a wagon of some kind, its frame made of a dull black metal, its rear axle bent, unusable. It was empty.

Wagons, not cars. Nor hovercraft or magnet trains. Buildings of brick and stone casting their shadow across dirt roads. No steel beams. No pipes or power lines. No communication towers. Leo spotted the crumbling remnants of a well. Whoever lived here was in the equivalent of the human Middle Ages. Primitive. Unevolved—though the Aykari probably thought the same thing about Leo’s kind when they happened upon Earth, with its coal-burning power plants and planes that required runways for takeoff. Still, of the buildings that remained, none reached more than two stories high, their glassless windows covered in curtains of heavy gray fabric, draped over them like shrouds.

All but one, that is. Up and to his left, a curtain was pulled back to reveal a leathery, purplish face punctuated by big black eyes and large, almost bat-like ears tufted with white fur. Leo got only a glimpse of it before the curtain fell back into place.

“Um. Guys? There’s something in that building. And it was definitely watching us.”

“Did it look like it might go by the name Zirkus Crayt?” Kat asked. “Because that would be convenient.”

“There’s another one,” Boo said, pointing up the road to where a second of the creatures was peeking at them from behind a half-crumbled building. This one didn’t immediately go back to hiding after being noticed, but continued to stare, its big eyes blinking, curious. Leo had never encountered this species. He wondered if the alien watching him had ever seen a human before. If so, he wondered what kind of impression that human might have made. And if Leo was about to pay for it.