“You’ve never given up, have you?” The voice just behind him was somewhat softer than his, but with a toughness that showed that his wife, Burodir, was not just another pretty face.

“You know I haven’t,” he almost sighed. “And I never will. I can’t when—now, for instance—you can actually see the damn thing tantalizing me, almost mocking me. Challenging me.” He pointed a clawed and webbed index finger out at the dark.

She sat beside him. Theirs was not a romantic union. She had been married off to him because her father was the power behind the throne and needed a watch kept on this stranger. Though rumor said the old man had choked to death on a bad mork-worm, she knew deep inside that Antor Trelig had somehow arranged his demise, and then moved into the vacated place. She was her father’s daughter, though, so revenge was out of the question. She would remain loyal and faithful to Trelig—unless and until she could increase her own powers safely by knocking him off.

He understood that. He was the same way.

She peered out into the darkness and the U-shaped starfield showing through the Mountain Gate. “Where is it?” she asked.

“Almost at the horizon,” he gestured. “About the size of a twenty-nug piece. See it, all silvery in the reflection of the sun?”

Now she had it in sight—it was huge, really, but so low down and so oddly colored that it would often escape detection if one had a limited view of the horizon.

“New Pompeii,” he breathed. “It was mine once—it will be mine again.”

Once he’d been what he called human—resembling the folk of Glathriel far to the southeast. He’d been born unguessable billions of light-years from this spot, born to rule the Comworld of New Harmony, where everyone was hermaphroditic and all looked the same, but where party leaders like him had been larger, grander, than the rest.

He loved power; he’d been born to it and raised to wield it. Wealth and position meant nothing to him unless they served his lust for power. That was why he was content for now to be Minister of Agriculture, an anonymous lower cabinet position. Few knew him even in Makiem, except as the Entry who’d crashed there in a spaceship.