“And you’re surprised?” demanded Coalshack. The Cal’mari policeman-vigilante approached us from the stern, where he had been keeping watch. “Then you truly are aliens. Can’t you eat the dessert on your home world?”

Blinking in surprise, I stammered. “Why would we leave twenty thousand square miles of sugar to explore the cold, forbidding stars?”

“So, you aliens want to invade us for our sugar?” Coalshack murmured in dour suspicion.

“That’s silly!” scoffed Fu Tichi. “You could have just taken some sugarworms with you.”

“Sugarworms?”

The captain pointed off to starboard. “Like that one.”

Sure enough, staring in that direction I soon spotted a sinuous shape slithering among the sparkling-frosted dunes, diving into one of them with a jaunty flick of its spoon-like tail. While the landscape offered few perspective clues, I estimated the creature’s length to be in excess of two hundred meters!

Squinting against the glare of granulated sweet-sand, I soon spotted another pair. One of them, just before diving, arched its rear and emitted a cloud of white powder which almost certainly had to be pure, granulated sucrose.

“It comes from their… defecation…?”

I took out a kerchief and wiped hard at my tongue and lips.

“Yes indeed,” Dr. Katske commented professorially, joining us at the rail. “City folk used to send out great big harvesters, back in the days of high population, before the Ultimate Crisis. Of course such a high-fecalorie diet led to obesity. And dental and dietary problems! The first wave of Normort-vampires could scarcely bite a neck without sucking in a carb overload. Which of course caused fang decay.”

“And Lik’ems got tusk cavities?” Envision Lorg and Besh chomping down on syrupy steaks. Oy.

Katske nodded. “Which led to more trouble, when inexperienced dentists used silver fillings. Which almost led to extinction of the profession in the infamous Night of the Novocanines…”

It was hard not to stare as a majestic worm reared out of the sands, not half a kilometer away. “They look awesome,” I admitted.

“They look delicious,” said Nuts, who had been complaining for weeks about missing fresh meat.

“There’s nothing quite like hunting and slaughtering a Sugarworm on a lovely sunny morning,” offered Fu Tichi.

“Why would you want to?” asked Coalshack.

“I take it you’re not into blood sports.”

“Our world is already awash in blood,” mumbled Coalshack. Like most city-swelling Standards, he was vegetarian – a fact I found ironic, since his stake-hurling weapon had at least two dozen notches from successful vampire and werewolf kills. But then again, who am I to judge? Take the inhabitants of Vega IV, who are all – of course – vegans. They consume only fruits and vegetables… much to the irritation of their neighbors, the contemplative Zen Apples of Vega III.

“Does the desert beg for mercy?” Fu Tichi asked Coalshack. “Does it tell you it’s got a wife and three kids and a mortgage?”

“No. What does that have to do with—”