“And along the way?” I asked pointedly. We had been over this.

The lovercraft captain gave a lopsided smirk that might have made him a movie star, if there were still such things in our more enlightened age.

“Sure thing, kid. A promise is a promise. We’ll keep all eyes open for parts of Moulder. And if we recover any, I know where to mail them.”

Indeed, that was one reason why I felt optimistic about the odds of a happy ending for the people of this world. For, despite their desperate decline into fratricidal war, they had clung tenaciously, by consensus from all the castes, to the very basics of civilization. Like a Postal Service.

Earl Dragonlord was last to board the shuttle. Already his ear and chin prosthetics were in place, along with those gleaming canines. Back in full aristocratic Nomort mode, the erstwhile Spertin spy could not help but taunt.

“You are aware that there will be unforeseen consequences, even to your cunning plan.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Suppose you succeed in the first part. Your interventions manage to tone down the Leininger toxins and get everyone eating harmless dessert sand instead of each other. And let’s further presume that all of this helps restore the balance that these natives started forging for themselves a century ago. Civilization resumes its upward progress!”

“You vowed to help make that happen, convincing the Nomort clans.”

“And I shall, for my own benefit and theirs. Still… you do realize that there will still be… inconvenient outcomes?”

I nodded. Earl could look beyond the immediate future and so could I, something that – for all their manic brilliance – my demmie ship-mates and comrades would never manage.

“The many races of this world will adapt quickly, and learn,” I said in a low voice. “And in short order, they will join the Alliance.”

“Yes, and one consequence will be?”

I turned to look toward the west.

“Vampires, wolfmen, zombies… and who knows what else… will all roam the spacelanes, free to cross the galaxy.”

He nodded. “A milder and more civilized version of the original Spertin plan.”

“Much more civilized.”

“Perhaps. But just the same, these Nomorts and the others may be beyond even the power of demmie luck to control.”

“We’ll manage,” Captain Ohm assured, coming around the bow of the shuttle craft, whose engines were starting to warm up. “With a little help from Ya-Tze’s dice, along with an alliance of free, sapient beings built on empathy and good will.”

Behind him followed Nuts, cradling something creepily mechanical in her arms, along with Guts clutching a bulging bag of his precious samples from every life- and un-life form he had been able to poke with his greedy needle.

Earl nodded. “Always self-assured. Ever-confident in your adaptability and manifest destiny – traits we humans once thought to be our foremost qualities. Only tell me, Captain, what will those avail you, when there are demmie vampires on the loose?”