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and slunk out of the room.
    Eris pushed herself away from the wall, shaken by the violence of the past few minutes. “Thank you,” she said to Grashk in a quiet voice.
    He hissed dismissively and picked up the rod. “There is no reason to thank me. The captain ordered punishment for cowardly prisoners. You did not display such a pitiful quality and therefore you do not require punishment.”
    Eris nodded mutely as Grashk returned to the central console. That makes no sense, she thought, but I’m certainly not going to argue the point.
    Concerned about Miguri, she hurried to his cell. Her little friend was curled up in a ball, furry white tail wrapped several times around his thigh. Eris knelt down beside him and carefully pried back his tail. The brown fabric of his pants had sizzled away, and two angry burns stood out on his skin—skin she found far too pale, considering its usual suntanned shade.
    “Oh, Miguri! Does it hurt a lot?”
    “I have experienced worse,” he replied. “But thank you for your concern.”
    Having no first-aid supplies and doubting Grashk would provide any, Eris tried to think of what she could use as a balm for Miguri’s wounds. Then she spotted Miguri’s bowl of breakfast. “Who would have guessed space jelly had so many uses?” she mused, slathering the cool substance over her friend’s burns.
    “Ah! Much better.”
    The captives decided to stay in Miguri’s cell for a while, reluctant to go into the control room in case Grashk and Tarsis renewed their argument. Neither of them wanted to become collateral damage to a Ssrisk fistfight.
    Searching for a topic of conversation, Eris said, “Why don’t you tell me about Claktilla?”
    She spent the next few hours entranced as Miguri reminisced about his lost home planet. From the way he described it, Claktilla had been a paradise. The trees had towered a mile high, with teal-colored bark and broad leaves in all shades of the rainbow. The Claktilli homes had been intricate tree houses built on top of thick branches and joined to each other by rope bridges. Joyful music had filled the air each evening. Sunsets, always beautiful, had been silvery spectacles with all three moons arrayed along the horizon. The monstrous jsgarn— a huge, ravenous creature native to Claktilla that Miguri said could devour ten Claktills in one bite—sounded to Eris like a creature in a fairy tale.
    “And then the Rakorsians destroyed your beautiful world,” she said. “Why would they do that?”
    Miguri shrugged, hair drooping sadly. “Claktilla was never a prominent presence in the galaxy. We are a peaceful species and had a very small star fleet. Most of the galaxy considers us something of a joke. I think they do not take us seriously because of our appearance.”
    Eris frowned. “I like your appearance!”
    “Thank you, but I fear you are in a minority. Most find us quite comical looking. Regardless, when the Rakorsians decided to push the boundaries of their empire—again—Claktilla was one of the first to fall victim, because we refused to submit to their rule. The Rakorsians bombarded our beautiful planet with chemical attacks that turned all the beauty of my world into toxic sludge.”
    “That’s terrible!” Eris exclaimed.
    “Rakorsians expend a great deal of resources developing superior military technology. It is that, and their skill at genetic manipulation, that makes the rest of the galaxy fear them so much.”
    “And now your home is gone. But how did you get away?”
    “When we realized the Rakorsians were coming, we fit as many Claktills on our ships as we could and fled the planet. Not everyone made it. The Psilosians offered us some of their old cruisers as colony ships, and my people have been traveling the stars as refugees ever since.”
    They stared at each other.
    “Yes, I definitely hate the Rakorsians,” Eris said. She glanced at Miguri’s leg and was pleasantly surprised to see that the burns had nearly faded under