For a few hours the Arbitrary had left the world's snowflakes unmolested, and gone collecting other samples at Li's request. The first time Li saw me on the ship he'd come up to me and whispered, 'Take him to see The Man Who Fell To Earth,' and slunk off. The next time I saw him he claimed it was the first time and I must be hallucinating if I thought we'd met before. A fine way to greet a friend and admirer, claiming he'd been going about whispering cryptic messages ... So; one moonless, November night, darkside over the Tarim Basin ... Li was giving a dinner party. He was still trying to become captain of the Arbitrary, but he seemed to have his ideas about rank and democracy mixed up, because he thought the best way to become 'skipper' was to get us all to vote for him. So this was going to be a campaign dinner. We sat in the lower hangar space, surrounded by our hardware.
