"Live food?" Kress asked.
Wo shrugged. "Each maw eats mobiles from the other castles, yes."
"I am intrigued," he admitted. "If only they weren't so small!"
"Yours can be larger. These sandkings are small because their tank is small. They seem to limit their growth to fit available space. If I moved these to a larger tank, they'd start growing again."
"Hmmm. My piranha tank is twice this size and vacant. It could be cleaned out, filled with sand . . ."
"Wo and Shade would take care of the installation. It would be our pleasure."
"Of course," Kress said, "I would expect four intact castles."
"Certainly," Wo said.
They began to haggle about the price.
Three days later Jala Wo arrived at Simon Kress's estate, with dormant sandkings and a y work crew to take charge of the installation. Wo's assistants were aliens unlike any Kress was familiar with-squat, broad bipeds with four arms and bulging, multifaceted eyes. Their skin.
e
was thick and leathery and twisted into horns and spines and protrusions at odd places upon their bodies. But they were very strong, and e good workers. Wo ordered them about in a musical tongue that Kress has never heard before.
In a day it was done. They moved his piranha tank to the center of his spacious living room, arranged couches on either side of it for better viewing, scrubbed it clean, and filled it two thirds of the way up with sand and rock. Then they installed a special lighting system, both to provide the dim red illumination the sandkings preferred and to project holographic images s into the tank. On top they mounted a sturdy plastic cover, with a feeder mechanism built in. w "This way you can feed your sandkings without removing the top of the tank," Wo explained.