“What about the Lik’ems that you hunt… sometimes they do, right?”

Coalshack ignored the dig. After considering for a long moment, he asked: “Does a Sugarworm?”

“Does a Sugarworm what?”

“Does a Sugarworm beg for mercy?”

“I guess you won’t know until you hunt one,” Fu Tichi teased, and I could tell the tension between them was climbing toward danger levels. Time to change the subject.

“I wonder if this world’s got a chocolate desert, hidden over on the dark side. That’d be a real export commodity.”

“What is… chocolate?” Cuspitui asked in a yowl that sounded eager.

“Of course, you’ve never tasted Earth’s greatest delicacy and trade commodity. Well, that will be just one of the great advances and life improvements from relations with the Federated Alliance of Worlds.”

It was all I had left – talking this band of revenge-obsessed Standards into looking at the bigger picture. If they could be persuaded to seek First Contact and membership in the FAW, then Commander Nomlin and I might get access to materials to build a subspace transmitter.

Nuts eagerly took up her end of the sales pitch. “Great idea! Only it gets better. Perhaps with some advanced bio-engineering, we could get sugarworms to poop a wide variety of delicacies! Chocolate for starters. But then strawberry, vanilla, flan, starfruit, tapioca…”

From just her wistful tone – and the line of drool forming at the corner of her demmie mouth – she was winning over Katske and Cuspitui better than I could. Even Coalshack, clearly despite himself, leaned in, listening eagerly. But at length Nuts finished her long list of delightful flavors and conversation eventually lapsed. Hours slowly passed as we thrummed across endless stretches of what Katske insisted should be called the Great Sugarfrosted Dessert.

Finally, with the sun past zenith, Captain Fu Tichi announced:

“We have arrived.”

Looking around, at first I saw nothing but treeless emptiness.

“Arrived… where?”

“At our rendezvous – the Big Rock Candy Boulder. Engines off!”

Kissing the terrain ever-more slowly, our lovercraft came to nibbling rest next to a gleaming hillock that – unlike the surrounding dunes – seemed to be made of one massive, diamondlike crystal. A cluster of figures stood there, shrouded in hooded black robes.

“Femen,” Coalshack said, disapprovingly, fingering his weapon as if expecting trouble from the dark-clad, desert dwellers, below.

“We’re at the appointed place and the greeting party is here,” Fu Tichi finished. “Passengers disembark!”

At first I worried he meant to dump me and Nuts and Katske in the middle of this desert waste, with those ominous beings. But then a pair approached us from the bow of the ship – the two I briefly met, upon coming aboard – a blonde young man in an off-white karate robe, whose shimmering sword hung from one hip, giving off a faint humming sound and whiffs of ozone. He was accompanied by a tiny, shriveled, gnomelike being, who rode upon the boy’s back, steering him by clutching both ears.