"Can we keep 'em?" If Lefty Dusenberg had been the praying type, he would have called it the answer to his prayers. He had been a master burglar, the head of a skillful ring of thieves that eluded the law for years. He was happily married to an equally thievish woman. Karla had been the advance woman who charmed her way into rich people's houses and then, pretending to admire the decor, got the owners to give her a tour that might even include telling her where the safe was and which of the paintings were originals with resale value on the black market. It has been a satisfying life in all respects but one: they'd never had any children to bring up in the criminal way of life. So this baby who fell out of the sky seemed like the one thing he needed to make his life complete. The kid even came with what Lefty figured was a pet, a strange kind of fish with a face so expressive, it was almost like a person. It was like here was the family life he'd longed for all these years, dropped into the prison exercise yard years after he'd given up on ever having it.

Omar Jenkins had the opposite reaction, at first. He had seen enough movies to expect that, when something came from outer space, it usually wasn't friendly, and his rise to ganglord necessitated being hypersensitive to danger. But Lefty's question made him notice that the two little creatures inside the pod were pretty obviously harmless. Helpless, too. And the kid was blue. Another thing Omar was hypersensitive to was skin color, and so far as he knew, this was the only blue person on the planet. Poor kid was gonna need some serious guidance, growing up in this world.

"Get 'em outa sight," Omar commanded in a low voice. "Guards be here any second." Lefty picked up the baby and the fish and moved through the crowd, away from the doors. Billy Bob, who was a father and knew that, with babies, something always got left behind, spotted the glowing pacifier, grabbed it, and followed Lefty. While Omar was insisting to the guards that what they were seeing was what the prisoners had seen that there'd been nothing inside it when it landed, Lefty was on the other side of a screen of orange-clad men, jiggling the two alien children in his arms and whispering.

"Who's a cute little crook? Who's gonna be da greatest criminal ever? You are. Yeah, you."