Captain Ohm led the way down those gleaming stairs, and soon representatives of the living, the undead and the alien filed after him – some of them nervously – to begin taking seats. I could tell that after such a demonstration the locals were suitably impressed. I caught the eye of the vigilante cop, Coalshack, noting that the fellow wasn’t sauntering with his usual arrogance, and his stake-hurling weapon was discreetly tucked away.

Ohm conspicuously left empty the place to his right, for me. Still, I approached the steps slowly, glancing back to make sure that a final component of Operation Round Table had not been neglected. The part I cared about most, right about now.

But I need not have worried. With a cheerful chime the door to the reconstruction chamber hissed open… and several attractive mess-hall servers emerged, each of them carrying a dozen or so flat-wide boxes. And from those boxes spilled vapors that struck me hard, with sudden, overwhelming longing.

Good. The pizzas are here.

15.

Okay, so in fact one of the races of undead was not present. I had grown used to thinking of Earl Dragonlord as a Nomort and it was still hard to envision him, instead, as a meddling alien invader-spy. In fact, Captain Ohm urged him to slip back into the role he had performed so well, all the way to re-inserting his false fangs, so that he might speak at this confab for the vampire caste, channeling the likely concerns of that undead race.

The notion struck Earl nonplussed.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“When a demmie is kidding, you’ll know it,” I assured. “You’ve played the role. Do it again for little longer.”

“Give me one good reason why I should cooperate,” Earl demanded.

Ohm had received a new blaster, which he now laid on the table before him. Unlike a simple laser pistol, the blaster had a big dial that he now spun, while casually asking, “Have you ever played nano roulette?”

The Spertin spy blanched. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Here’s the deal. I spin randomly among eighty optional nano-program settings, then I’ll shoot you and we’ll see what happens. Then, in the interest of fairness, I spin again and shoot myself. We keep at it until—”

“That’s illegal! It would be against the rules of war.”

“So is causing the deaths of millions of natives,” I pointed out. “And besides, about half of those blaster settings are perfectly legal to shoot at someone during a contact crisis. Like those stun nanos that bound and gagged you, when we first landed.”

“And the ones that still infest my ears?”

“What about ’em?” Ohm demanded. “Are you complaining about receiving a gift?”

“A gift?” Earl snorted.

“Certainly. The gift of universal understanding of languages. You’d look that gift horse in the mouth?”

“Hell yes, and say neigh! It’s another form of torture, when the translations include so many wretched puns!”