So I told him the story—the short version, the one starting in Cheyenne, not the complete saga including how I'd fallen in with Barnard in the first place. Probably I shouldn't be doing this, I thought while babbling, but frag, there are times when you've just got to talk to someone . I couldn't see what practical harm it would do. King Kam had my life in his hands anyway, and I couldn't think of any ways—well, not many ways, at least—that he could glitch things up for me worse than they already were. Besides, now that he wasn't wearing his feathered drek, Gordon Ho didn't seem that much different from me, and I felt myself drawn to like him.