Old one eyed Kangtoo they called him. As scrappy and flighty a character as you were ever likely to encounter. Kangtoo and his small hovering band of orbnauts could be found most evenings on the porch, soaking up infrared and tossing back cyanobacteria shots like there were no tomorrow.

Which, technically, was true for about one in eight of the lesser orbnauts.

Not Kangtoo. Kangtoo had seen it all, regaling his small band of followers with tales of fur bearing harvesters silently sliding through night skies, an emptiness in their wake. Daylight ambush of the shiny green ones. And, of course, the hover beasts: insatiable appetites, almost impossible to hide from.

Yet here he sat, Kangtoo, a mosaic of discolored scales marking the damage to one wing, a tattoo of a scar straddling thorax like a bifurcation in process. The little 'nauts, crowding close in their awe, competed to spot a new bit of damage or pick up a muttered story before the old timer slipped into a phytol slumber.