“What’s the bad news?” Waverly said.

“It’s about Tuffy,” Gunztar said. “The crown is attached to him.”

“Yes,” Waverly said. “It’s tangled in his hair. We’ll get it out. We’ll trim his hair down if we have to.”

“It’s not that simple,” Gunztar said. “You can’t get it off him because it’s tangled in his hair. You can’t get it off him because microscopic fibers have come off the crown and physically attached themselves to him, binding the crown to his physical body.”

“What?” Waverly said.

“The crown is permanently attached to Tuffy,” Gunztar said. “The scans our medical scientists did when he was brought back to the surface show it.”

“How could that possibly happen?” Abumwe asked.

“The crown is a very important symbol of the king,” Gunztar said. “Once taken up, it was supposed to never be taken off.” He pointed to a set of ridges on his own head. “The crown is designed to sit on the head of the king in such a way that it need never be removed. To assure that it never is, it is made with nanobiotic strands on the inside surface, tuned to graft to the genetic signature of the king. The crown is also sensitive to the electrical signals produced by life. It only comes off at death, when all brain and body activity are quiet.”

“How did it get attached to Tuffy?” Waverly said. “He obviously has no genetic relation to your king.”

“It’s a mystery to us as much as you,” Gunztar said.

“Hmmmm,” Wilson said.

“What is it, Wilson?” Abumwe said.

“How much of this genetic material would need to be present for the crown to register it?” Wilson said.

“You’d have to ask our scientists,” Gunztar said. “Why?”

Wilson motioned to Tuffy, who had dozed off. “When I found him, he was chewing on one of the king’s bones,” he said. “He’d been in and around that skeleton for at least an hour. More than enough time to get some of the king’s genetic material all over him. If the crown wasn’t programmed well, it might have registered the genetic material, registered electrical signals from Tuffy being alive and decided, ‘Well, close enough.’”

“So we give Tuffy a bath, wash off all the king’s, uh, dust, and the crown lets go,” Schmidt said. “Right?”

Wilson looked over at Gunztar, who offered up a negative gesture. “No. Only death will cause the crown to let go,” he said. He turned to Ambassador Waverly. “And the council, I’m afraid, is adamant that the crown must be removed.”

Waverly looked blankly at Gunztar for the ten seconds or so it took for what the praetor said to sink in. Wilson glanced over to Schmidt and Abumwe as if to say, Here it comes.

“You want to kill my dog?!” Waverly exclaimed to Gunztar.