New heart, new lungs, new digestive system, new endocrines, new everything. A walking talking machine-man. He spends a lot of time polishing himself. He worries a lot about getting dust in his gears. I would too, I guess. When he’s nervous or just thinking very hard, he’s got this habit of unfastening a hand or an arm or something and playing with it. Last night in the lounge he was playing polyvalent chess with Dr. Horkkk and in one of the exciting parts Pilazinool unhitched both his legs, his left-hand audio receptor, and his right shoulder. There was this big heap of cast-off Shilamakka parts next to him. Dr. Horkkk had him in double check with a flying rook coming in strong from the side, but Pilazinool got out of it very nicely by levitating his rear right bishop, knighting two pawns, and bringing down his chief justice in one of the sweetest counterpoise moves I’ve ever seen. The game ended in a draw. Pilazinool is like that: chilly, more machine than man, but resourceful.

The last member of our gang is 408b of 1. I’m sorry: that’s his name, or hers, or its. It comes from Bellatrix XIV, where the fashion is to call everything by numbers. “408b” is family and personal designation. “1” is the name of the planet; they’ve got the whole universe numbered, and naturally their own world is Number One. Old 408b is a yellowish-looking vidj with a basically octopoid appearance, round baggy body, five walking tentacles, five grasping tentacles, a row of eyes going all the way around, and a kind of parrot-beak mouth. Its specialty is paleotechnology, and it knows a good deal about the machinery of the High Ones, though so far it hasn’t imparted much of that to us. Unlike the rest of us, it isn’t happy in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, though it breathes it most of the time; three hours each day it goes off into a breathing chamber for a snootful of straight carbon dioxide. Mirrik thinks that 408b must be in symbiosis with some sort of plant life. Maybe so.