“Sstupid lizsard!” he yelled, zipping his pocket closed. He sucked on his burning knuckle, which just made his tongue sting. He looked down at the lady, who had one eye as open as it could get.

“Palan, huh?”

Walter nodded. He pulled his finger out of his mouth. “And proud of it,” he boasted.

“Grab us some chairs,” the lady said. She grumbled to herself: “I hardly made enough tonight to feel it.”

Walter had to go almost to the other side of the bar to find two unoc-cupied seats. He dragged them back, drawing glares from other patrons as they screeched across the floor. He almost expected the woman to be gone by the time he returned, but she was just sitting up.

“You with a sadist club?” she asked Walter, as he helped her into a chair. “Cause I still do those meetings for a fee.”

“I don’t think sso,” Walter answered, picking up the napkins and holding them out to her. He felt happy when she accepted them. There was something about the woman he couldn’t quite place; he’d seen a lot of bizarre alien stuff in his time, but nothing quite like her. “Why do you do this?” he asked.

The Callite leaned back in her chair. She looked him up and down as she wiped two kinds of blood off her hands. Somehow, having sat up, the swelling around her eyes didn’t look quite as bad as it had before.

“You’re too young to get it,” she finally said. “Now, you wanting an autograph, or you got a paying gig?”

“I . . . we—” Walter looked around, expecting Molly to walk in at any moment; he wondered where in hyperspace she’d gone to. “My friend Molly hass been trying to find you. Ssomething about fussion fu—”

A sticky hand latched onto his mouth faster than a Wadi firing from a hole in a cliff. Walter looked down his nose at it; he peered across the brown arm it was attached to, tracing it up to the very stern and blood-streaked face. There was no doubt about it: the swelling around the lady’s eyes had gone down a lot. He watched them dart from side to side before boring right through his skull.

“Who’re you with?” she asked.

Walter mumbled into her palm.

“Softly, now,” Cat said, pulling her hand away.

“Molly Fyde,” he whispered, looking around.

“That’s crap,” the woman said. “How do you even know that name?”

Walter pointed to his flightsuit, at his name scrawled across his left breast. “I’m crew on the sstarsship Parssona,” he hissed. “I’m the ssupply officser!”

The hand returned, grabbing Walter’s collar and pulling him out of the seat, hauling him close to the lady’s face—which, now that he was up-close, really seemed to be in not that bad of shape, to be honest.

“Where’s the ship?” the lady demanded. “And where’s Molly?”