With the Link return to Ceres closing in an hour, Kubo Flammarion had time for only a few private minutes with Chan Dalton before he had to guide Dougal MacDougal back to the surface.

“You could fight it, you know.” Kubo gestured around him. “I mean, with all this going for you and the Duke to help you, you could say no and I bet we’d never get you out of here. Why did you say yes?”

In the hours since they arrived at the Duke of Bosny’s court in the depths of the Gallimaufries — that’s what it felt like, a court, even if it wasn’t called that — Kubo had been mightily impressed. The way Dalton gave orders, casually; the way everyone nodded and scurried off to obey; the way they all cringed and kowtowed and groveled ; no one on Ceres, or anywhere away from Earth, had so much power and control.

The change, he suspected, was not in the inhabitants of the Gallimaufries. It was in Chan Dalton. Kubo remembered Chan as an innocent and compliant youth. Now he was a cool, calculating adult, whose battered face said he had seen everything and did only what he wanted to.

“I don’t know why you agreed,” Kubo went on, when Chan stared at him silently. “I mean, the aliens …”

“You don’t like them, do you?”

“Forget the `like’ bit. They give me the willies. Especially the Angels. I mean, they’re not just aliens. They’re not even animals . Why did you agree to meet with ’em?”

Dalton, Flammarion was pleased to see, did not go into the old “I do it for the good of humanity” speech. He had an odd little frown on his scarred face, of mixed puzzlement and annoyance.

“Fair question, Captain,” he said. “I don’t think I have a choice, but that’s not an acceptable answer.