The second day in our new location Dapper Dan, the Missing Link, stopped eating altogether. He sat motionless on the edge of his cot, his elbows supported on his knees, his face in his hands, and refused to move. There didn't seem to be anything physiologically wrong with him—at least, there was nothing we could spot—and finally Thaddeus decided that he was healthy enough to work. He paid no attention to Thaddeus' order to get up and move over to the sideshow tent, and Big Alvin had to half-drag and half-carry him there.

After the first show Thaddeus had Alvin bring him back to the dormitory tent, where he lay motionless on his cot. Thaddeus kept barking for the show until the crowds diminished in the late afternoon, then stalked into the tent and over to where Dapper Dan lay.

"All right!" he snapped. "Out with it! What the hell are you trying to pull?"

Dapper Dan made no answer.

"There's not a goddamned thing wrong with you!" continued Thaddeus.

He reached down and grabbed Dapper Dan by the shoulders, shaking him vigorously. "Admit it, you fucking ape! You're as healthy as I am!"

Dapper Dan made no effort to free himself, but merely met Thaddeus' enraged gaze with an expression that, on his particular face, could have been anything from resignation to boredom.

"Now you listen to me!" Thaddeus bellowed at the top of his lungs, and all the aliens turned to him. "I let Rainbow and Pumpkin stay in here when they're sick, and suddenly the monkey man's trying to pull a fast one! That's what I get for being such a considerate guy. If you goddamned freaks think you can get away with this kind of shit, you've got another think coming! Either Dapper Dan works tomorrow, or he can sit and sulk in the tent and Rainbow and Pumpkin will go on in his place."

"You'll kill them," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

"Not me, friend!" snapped Thaddeus. "If Rainbow goes out and turns into a blue popsicle, you'll know who to blame. He's lying right there on his cot. You hear me, apeman? I'll feed you and house you and medicate you when you need it, but you're going to work just as hard as I do, or you're going to wish you had. There's no third way!"

He stalked back out of the tent in the direction of his trailer, and Mr. Ahasuerus walked over to Dapper Dan while the other aliens studiously turned their attention elsewhere.

"What is the matter?" asked the blue man gently.

"I cannot tolerate the situation any longer," said the Missing Link. "Let him kill me if he wants. I look into the heavens, and I cannot even find my home star. I will never see my family again." He paused, and turned his gaze directly to Mr. Ahasuerus. "I will not spend the rest of my life as a caged animal, depending on the whim of a madman for such minimal comfort as he chooses to give me."

"There is nothing we can do," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

"We can escape!" said Dapper Dan passionately. "We can kill this evil man and leave!"

Mr. Ahasuerus shook his head sadly. "No, we can't."

"But why?" pleaded Dapper Dan, tears filling his eyes. "Why must I die without the sacraments of my religion? Why must I die on this piece of filth spinning around a star that I cannot even find on the charts of my world? Why must my soul be doomed to an eternity of aimless wandering in the void, an unthinkable distance from others of its kind?"

"We made a pledge to keep our existence a secret," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

"You made a pledge!" said Dapper Dan.

"So did you," Mr. Ahasuerus pointed out.

"I made a pledge to honor my God on my home world," said Dapper Dan. "I made a pledge to live out my days with the ones I love. Why should this pledge take precedence? It was made to a soulless company that had no idea of the consequences of our journey here."

Mr. Ahasuerus sighed, a terrible sound but somehow touching. "I can't stop you," he said at last. "You are a thinking being possessed of free will, and I have no more right to direct your life than Flint does. But I won't help you, and neither will any of the others. Our word must be our bond, regardless of how you yourself view it." He turned to me. "Tojo, if he were to escape, how far would he get?"

"Not very," I said. "Some of you might, if they didn't shoot you out of fear, but not Dapper Dan. He, more than any of you, resembles a wild animal of Earth. I think the first farmer who saw him would shoot him down. And the first person without a gun who saw him would call the police, and they would kill him."

"And even if you avoided them," said Mr. Ahasuerus, "where would you go? How can an alien in a hostile world survive? You don't even know where you are, so how could you find our shuttlecraft?"

"Then it's hopeless, and I shall die here, and my soul will wander aimlessly forever," said Dapper Dan. He lay down on his cot in an odd and seemingly uncomfortable position which I somehow knew to be his race's equivalent of the fetal position.

"I ask you to consider your fellow beings," said Mr. Ahasuerus. "If you do not go into the sideshow tent tomorrow, one of them will surely die, and the other will at the very least become sicker."

Dapper Dan lay perfectly still. He said nothing, and gave no indication that he had even heard the Blue Man.

Mr. Ahasuerus turned to me. "The truth, Tojo: will Flint do what he said?"

"I don't know," I replied truthfully. "I doubt it. He has no reason to see Rainbow die, and he has a very good financial reason to keep him alive. But if he feels that backing down would weaken his authority . . ." I let my voice trail off—it wasn't hard to do; it trails off all the time—and then looked up at him. "I really don't know."

"I know that he's a greedy man," said Mr. Ahasuerus. "I know that he's selfish and inconsiderate."

"He's not what they call other-directed, that's for sure," I put in.

"But I had not truly conceived of him as a totally evil man, a man who would willingly take a life merely to prove a point."

"I hope you're right," I said. "But just to be on the safe side, maybe you'd better try to convince Dapper Dan to go to work tomorrow."

"I can't force him to do what he doesn't want to do," said Mr. Ahasuerus. "Flint is a shrewd man, and a masterful manipulator, but the fact of the matter is that if the Man of Many Colors dies, it win be Flint and Flint alone who bears the responsibility for it."

"He'll be just as dead either way," I said. "I think you should talk to Dapper Dan."

The blue man uttered a dry chuckle; it sounded like a frog being choked. "He has even made a pragmatist out of you, hasn't he?"

"I guess he has," I replied.

Mr. Ahasuerus started walking to the other side at tent. "Let's let him think," he said softly. "I'll speak to him later."

I had about half an hour to kill before the next show, so I took the opportunity to make a brief tour of the carnival, which I hadn't done in days.

I saw Monk leading Bruno the Bear back to his bus, so I knew Billybuck Dancer would be performing in the specialty tent and I went inside to take a look.

He had an assistant—one of the strippers, dressed of in a metallic cowgirl suit—and she was holding four picture cards up where the audience could see them. Then she asked the Dancer if he was ready. He nodded his head slightly—the only visible sign that he hadn't gone to sleep while leaning against one of the tent poles—and then she tossed all four cards into the air.