Wayne was only allowed to nurse his headache for a few minutes before the screen came on again. The Commander and Babel Fish were back.

"Wayne Scott, called Metro Man, it is time for you to answer the Commander's questions. Who are you? Why did you come here? And why did you do it in the deceptive and dangerous way that you did?"

"Who I am... is what I came here to learn." The smaller fish translated simultaneously. "On Earth I, well, I'd been told by my mother, my human mother, about landing in their house when I was a baby, in a very small space ship, but they had no way of knowing where I had come from or who had sent me or why. Now I do know that, a little of it, and I'm grateful. So that's two questions. As far as why I stowed away instead of asking Megamind to take me along, well..." He groped for a phrasing that would put things in the best possible light while not making it sound like he was badmouthing Megamind. Megamind was one of them and he was not. "I wanted a chance to show that I could make a contribution." He tried for the appropriate sincere and pleading facial expression.

The Commander didn't speak. Babel Fish seemed to know what he wanted to ask next. "A contribution to our colonization effort?"

"Yes. Enough for you to feel that I was worthy of the help you gave me."

"And you didn't expect your longtime rivals to be willing to give you that chance."

"No."

"That explains the deception. What about the risk?"

"That was unforgivable." It was something that had been drummed into him in prep school. If you fail in a way that's not deniable, don't bother trying to deny it. You'll just make things worse for yourself. "I'm not asking for forgiveness. Just a chance to atone."

"You didn't answer the question."

Wayne looked "down", considering adjectives, throwing them away. It seemed that they didn't want the display of remorse that an authority figure back home would expect. They literally wanted to know the reasons behind his decision. And simple ignorance wouldn't cut it. He hadn't exactly known what the risks were, but he had known that he didn't know, and had acted anyway. It had seemed to him to be worth the risk.

Then it came to him. "I figured this was my only chance. I saw the plans for that ship. I had no hope of understanding them, much less building a ship of my own. It was either take this chance or be left on Earth for the rest of my life, looking up at the stars and longing for answers I was never going to get."

Babel Fish translated, then discussed things with the Commander for a moment. Wayne took a moment to look down at the habitat, not to see how many people were watching him (although he noticed that the answer was, plenty) but searching for the real individuals speaking into the camera that was feeding this screen. When he did, he was surprised at their sizes. He'd guessed that the Commander was bigger than Minion, Babel Fish smaller, but in fact they were both bigger. The Commander was enormous. A gorilla body for him would have to be twenty feet tall just to have a big enough tank.

"Now," the smaller Opuulu continued. "What kind of contribution do you consider yourself capable of making?" Although he had never been through a job interview, he recognized this question as the beginning of the chance he'd asked for. It meant they hadn't dismissed him at first sight.

"You receive KMCP News. How familiar are you with Metro City television news coverage of my career?"

"Quite familiar. Video programs from Metro City are the only broadcast entertainment from Earth that shows us persons from our Home Star Group, so they are the most popular. We have seen the coverage of your battles, your interviews and the events honoring you, as well as the reports of your activities in the League of Heroes and the biography that Super Action Round-Up does every five years." So the four of them who'd come on the Adventure were all celebrities here, too. Wayne wondered whether the people of Harolup had been rooting for the villains all these years.

"Then I won't waste your time describing that part of my experience."

"It won't be a waste if what you tell us is your experience, as opposed to what got into the broadcasts."

Wayne smiled at that. Just because these people had never been to Earth, that didn't mean they were unsophisticated. "Okay. My work as a hero usually started with a phone call from the mayor, police chief, fire chief or some other authority, although it could also be a cry for help from an ordinary citizen or a situation I spotted myself while flying around the city. Most crimes by humans can be handled by the human authorities, although I did intervene in one of those from time to time, just to keep the criminal element aware that I might show up at any time." He stopped himself, realizing that he was recapping what he'd said in a dozen interviews over the years. They wanted what didn't get in the broadcasts? Okay, then. "Or sometimes Roxie would discover something. She was an old-fashioned investigative reporter, bright and persistent and absolutely fearless. Not all my rescues of her were the result of some villain setting out to kidnap her. Sometimes she got caught while she was snooping around. She also used to call on me when there was criminal plotting going on and she knew about it but couldn't plant a microphone or sneak in. I would use my X-ray vision and super-hearing, give her my notes afterward, and she'd break the story. She was always careful to leave my name out of it, and to imply that one of the plotters had betrayed the others. This made it easier for the police to convince one of them to really betray the others. Naturally, if my involvement in this kind of investigating were known, it would lose half its effectiveness as a means of inducing criminal conspirators to turn state's evidence, so it was kept from the public. Another thing that didn't get reported was the effort I made to keep major battles available to the cameras. That's what the GPS tracking feature on the phone was for: if things moved fast, they wouldn't have any problem figuring out where the action was. This was one area where I didn't favor KMCP over the other stations. Every reporter and camera crew working in Metro City had access to that signal, so none of them had anything to gain by talking about it. I would also do what I could to keep the battles in areas of low population, not that it was hard. Most supervillains love media attention and the areas with low population tend to be the ones with good sight lines for filming. Is this the kind of thing you're looking for?"

"Please continue."

So he did. He intended to keep things positive, but any behind-the-scenes look was going to include government officials who blocked investigations, editors who killed stories and people who attempted to mislead him in order to get him to do some kind of dirty work for them. He even threw in one or two incidents, early in his career, when the misleading had succeeded, and he made a point of crediting Roxie for the fact that it had stopped happening. Her crap-detector was as valuable as any super-sense of his, and he had come to rely on it. It ended up being the story of how the two of them, with the support of Roxanne's editor and some smart people in the police forensics lab, had swept out the network of city officials, shipping company foremen and bankers who were in bed with the local mob. They had followed one thread of that network into the Scott Foundation, where it ended in the office of a man his parents had trusted for decades. This led to his taking over the management of the foundation himself, and talking about it let him segue into his work as a manager. He finished up with music and the way he found himself able to change the atmosphere in a room just by picking up a guitar and leading a sing-along. He didn't have to be very good. Better if he wasn't, in fact, and he'd found that subtly squeezing the neck so that the instrument went out of tune, and then struggling with it on stage, was more effective for generating warm feelings than any well-played song.

"And what are your goals now, beyond the atonement you spoke of earlier?"

"I want to find my people, to meet them face to face, and I want to find the Star Eater people before they find us."

"That last is a goal we share, although it is questionable whether we will have the resources to act on it in our lifetime. We will take what you have said into consideration. You may continue your research." The screen went blank.

###

The hammock was similar to the one Roxanne had brought home from a college Spring Break trip to the Yucatan and used every summer since, a vast, fine net of strings without stretchers. Megamind had never been in one before.

"It's harder to get into than a regular hammock, but it's a lot more comfortable once you're in," she explained. Then she helped him get into it. She stood next to it where it hung the diagonal length of the little room so that it rested against the backs of her thighs, had him stand in front of her with his back to her, so close they were almost touching, then spread the strings with one hand and sank down while pulling him toward her with the other so that he ended up sitting in her lap. "Now lift your legs and swing them left," she said, doing the same herself while moving her upper body to the right and pulling his along. She caught the edge of the hammock with her other hand and her toes and spread it so that the net held their whole bodies. "There." She lay back, pulling him along, then released him. "What do you think?"

"Hmm." He squirmed a little on top of her. "If it is guaranteed to include you, then I would say it couldn't be anything other than perfectly comfortable, but I think I should get a more representative sample." He moved until he was beside her except for one of her arms under his neck. The tension of the hammock prevented them from lying completely separately, not that they wanted to. He shifted around a little more, adjusting his weight on the strings. "Yes, I think I shall get a very good night's sleep in this." He kissed her shoulder.

"Do you think our audience is going to be disappointed that we're not making love?" she asked.

"It really bothers you, the idea of being watched."

"Yeah. Doesn't it bother you?"

"Remember, in prison there wasn't any privacy, either. My earliest sexual education was watching couples going at it in the showers and the exercise yard. My uncles would try to keep me away, but I was an elusive little boy and I was determined to see, specifically because I wasn't allowed to. By the time I was ten or so, I was bored with it."

"And people didn't gawk?"

"New men made the mistake of gawking sometimes. Generally not more than once."

"So there was an etiquette about it."

"I wouldn't have used that word but, yes. Staring was rude, and rudeness could get you punched in the face."

"[Wrist unit,]" she said. "[What are the informal rules about observing sexual activity here?]"

Words appeared in the air above them. "[Questions about informal rules require consultation. Please wait.]" The couple looked at each other for a long moment, puzzled. Then the hologram of an elderly Yi[gulp]vi woman, as naked as they were, appeared on their ceiling, reclining in a shallow white-floored pool of water.

"[Hello, Amnang. Hello, Roxanne. I am U[click]hani Vöhryeh. I"ve been appointed cultural consultant for you visitors from Earth. You asked about informal rules about observing sexual activity?]"

They nodded.

"[Well, first of all, sexual activity isn't a unique category of activity here. The rules are the same as if you were watching someone build something or play a game. And the first rule is to remember that, no matter how much the hologram shows you, you are not there and therefore you can't possibly know as much about what's going on as someone who is. Therefore you must not offer any opinions or corrections or any other sort of comment, either at the time or afterward, unless the person you observed asks for them. There are two exceptions to this rule. One is if you see something physically dangerous happening. The persons there may have divided attention and be unaware, so you may break in. The other is that compliments are always welcome so long as you don't override the interruption block to give them.]"

"[So some total stranger could come up to me in the hallway tomorrow and say "Hey, Earth girl, you were really hot last night!]"

"[Certainly. It's considered the best sort of compliment to be told that something you did inspired someone else to do something, and that includes having orgasms.]"

"[Okay,]" said Roxanne while thinking, I have got to take another look at Professor Slausson's notes about coping with culture shock. "[Any other rules we should know about?]"

"[You may ask questions if the persons you are observing have not set an interruption block, just as you would if you wanted to say something that was irrelevant to what they were doing.]"

"[We'd both like one of those interruption blocks,]" said Megamind.

"[You've been the talk of Harolup every since your message arrived. If you haven't felt deluged with questions and comments all day, then I think you can assume you have them, although your wrist units can confirm that. You may also find out from your wrist units who is watching you, either generally or specifically, at the time or later, and you may ask for comments from anyone who is watching you or has watched you, although they are not obligated to give them. You may also invite particular people to watch. They are free to refuse, but if they say they will, then they must watch unless they have a very good excuse.]"

"[What about asking some particular person not to watch you?]" The particular person Roxanne had in mind was Wayne. It was one thing to be watched by people who had not been raised with a voyeurism taboo and would watch innocently. It was another to be watched by someone who'd been raised with the same rules she had.

U[click]hani Vöhryeh frowned. "[Oh. Oh, dear. That's considered very serious. I hope you and this hypothetical other person will have sought mediation counseling before it comes to that.]"

"[One more thing,]" Megamind added. "[I ask this because I've run into it more than once on Earth. If two people are talking and one has watched and the other hasn't and the one who has takes advantage of the other's ignorance to misrepresent what he or she saw, how serious is that?]"

"[That would depend on what choices were made based on that misinformation, but it would always be very serious.]"

"[So is that all the rules?]" asked Roxanne.

"[Those are the rules as they apply to sexual activity.]"

"[Thank you, U[click]hani Vöhryeh.]" "

[You're welcome, and have fun.]" She gave them a knowing smile and vanished.

"Hoping to avoid being watched by a person who has X-ray vision?" Megamind asked.

"How did you know?"

"He's the only person aboard that you know well enough to want to particularly exclude, aside from Minion, and he'd be too embarrassed to watch."

"And you're right in that it's silly of me to worry about him seeing us. He learned to restrain himself from peeping a long time ago. He's probably the only awake, off-duty person on this space station who's not watching us."

"[Wrist unit, how many people are watching us?]"

"[Two,]" said the system.

"What?" Roxanne was perversely disappointed. "Have most people lost interest already?"

"Maybe something else is happening. [Wrist unit, of everything being watched right now, what is being watched by the largest number of people, and what percentage of the number watching anything is that?]"

"[Ninety-six percent of those watching anything are watching the current conversation between Wayne Scott and Sa[squish]ikwuë Nawa, translated by Ivri[click] Nemya.]"

Megamind grinned. "It seems that watching us in bed holds less interest that watching the Commander rip Wayne a new one. I think we should take advantage of this opportunity."

"What do you mean?"

"We've got only two people watching us, and they're probably safety staff who are watching every sleeping person aboard. It's the closest thing to privacy we're going to get aboard this sardine can." He put an arm around her, along the bottom edges of her breasts, and smiled eagerly.

He could tell by the look on her face that she was still wavering, so he decided to use his next tactic, which was to pretend he'd already been rejected. He knew she thought he was cute when he sulked. "Oh, fine," he said. pouting and rolling over so his back was to her. "Here I am in a type of bedding that forces me into close skin contact with the most beautiful woman in two worlds and I've got to be celibate."

She giggled, and he knew he'd convinced her. "[Wrist unit,]" she said. "[Turn down the lights in here, as close to total darkness as you can.]" The room dimmed. As close as it could turned out to be very close; only three tiny red lights glowed, leaving the rest of the room, and Minion's empty suit in the corner, almost invisible. She embraced him from behind. "If we can't keep 'em from watching, at least we can make 'em squint."