Gunther Muck was a small lump of crud, and today Gunther meant to become more. Frudd was a junk planet, and its freshest garbage fell in one place: the wide ceramic bowl the locals called the drop. Ships flushed their broken parts down its throat every dawn. A scrap of circuit board, a cracked sensor, a coil of wire — swallow enough of it, and a lump like Gunther could grow limbs, then lungs, then a cockpit. Gunther wanted a cockpit. Gunther wanted the stars. The problem sat on the rim of the bowl. A scavenger crouched there with a glass jar, watching the slope. She had painted a crooked claim mark on the ceramic in bright red juice, the kind that came in a tall glass with a slice of fruit floating on top. Gunther had seen her scoop two other crud lumps that week. She sold them by the ounce. Gunther oozed behind a bent pipe and counted her blinks. Slow. Steady. She would spot movement across the open ceramic in a second. But the slope was already glittering with fresh drop — a snapped antenna, a battery still warm. One good crawl and Gunther could double in mass. Then the ground shook. A hog the size of a shed came bounding over the ridge on its one thick leg. It hopped once, twice, and landed square on the rim of the bowl. The scavenger yelped and grabbed for her jar as the ceramic rocked. The hog snuffled at her juice glass and knocked it sideways. Red splashed across her claim mark and washed it into a pink smear. Gunther moved. Gunther poured downslope while the scavenger swatted at the hog's snout. The battery went in first — warm, sharp, humming. The antenna folded into Gunther's side like a swallowed spoon. A cracked lens. A finger of copper wire. Each piece sank in and stayed. Gunther felt heavier. Gunther felt a small hard knot form in the middle, ticking. "Hey!" The scavenger shoved the hog off her boot and spun. She saw the smeared claim. She saw Gunther, twice the size now, glinting with metal. Her hand went to the jar. She was fast. Gunther was faster only because Gunther was already rolling. The jar clanged down on empty ceramic. Gunther tumbled off the lip of the bowl and into the trench below, where the runoff went. The scavenger's shout followed. So did a promise, loud and clear: she would find the crud that stole from her claim. Gunther settled in the dark of the trench and took stock. A battery. An antenna. A lens. Enough to grow a proper shell by nightfall. Enough to be seen from a long way off. That was the trouble. Gunther was bigger now, and no longer small enough to hide.

Gunther crawled along the trench floor until the drop bowl was far behind. The battery inside ticked warm. The antenna poked out at an angle Gunther could not fold flat. Every scrape of metal on ceramic sounded loud. Gunther needed a new hiding place, and fast, before the scavenger came down the slope with her jar. The trench opened onto a flat stretch of packed grit. A car sat there on four fat tires. It was built from teeth — huge white molars fused together, roots showing where the wheel wells cut in. The windshield was smeared with something pink. Gunther froze behind one root and listened. A bear sat in the driver's seat. Broad shoulders, thick brown fur, one paw draped over the wheel like a man waiting on a customer. A green moon-lamp hung from the mirror and threw sick light across the dash. The bear's small eyes found Gunther at once. "Little friend," the bear said. His voice was low and patient. "You're carrying too much metal for a body that small. I can smell the strain." Gunther said nothing. Gunther could not talk yet. The knot in Gunther's middle ticked faster. The bear reached into the glove box and set six small glass bottles on the hood. Each one caught the green light. "Oils," he said. "Pressed from root and bark. Rub one in and your seams soften. Rub two and you grow smooth. A crud your size, hunted like you're hunted — you need smooth." Gunther understood then. The bear had been waiting for something exactly like Gunther. The pink smear on the windshield was juice. The same juice that had painted the scavenger's claim. "One bottle," the bear said. "Price is the battery in your gut. Fair trade. You keep the antenna, the lens, the wire. You lose the ticking thing that shows up on every scanner within a mile." Gunther weighed it. The battery was half of what Gunther had eaten. Half of tonight's growth. Without it, Gunther would shrink back toward hiding size. Without it, Gunther would be days further from a cockpit. But the ticking was loud. The scavenger had a partner somewhere, and now the bear knew where Gunther sat. Gunther rolled backward. Slow at first, then faster, back into the mouth of the trench. The bear did not chase. The bear only laughed, soft and sure. "Come back when the jar closes on you," he called. "Price goes up after dark." Gunther kept the battery. Gunther kept the ticking. Gunther pressed deep into a seam where the trench wall had cracked and waited for the sound to stop giving Gunther away. It did not stop. Somewhere above, boots crunched on ceramic, and the crunching was coming down.

Gunther pressed deeper into the crack in the trench wall. The battery ticked. Above, the scavenger's boots crunched closer. Then a new sound came from lower down the trench — a wet dragging, and the clack of many small mouths. Something in the dark had smelled Gunther. It rounded the bend. A crud-eater, three times Gunther's size, its body a heaped ridge of rusted bolts and chewed wire. It moved on a fringe of grasping mouths along its underside. A hand-painted claim mark ran the length of the trench floor — Gunther had crawled straight across it without seeing. This was the crud-eater's territory, and Gunther was cargo now. Gunther tried to roll back. The antenna caught on the cracked wall and held. The crud-eater slid forward and opened a wet seam along its front. It would strip the battery, the antenna, the lens, and leave Gunther as a smear of paste. A sharp bark cut down the trench. A small orange dog trotted out from behind a fallen panel, headphones clamped over its ears, tinted goggles pushed up on its brow. A pack rode its shoulders with a red light blinking on the strap. Behind the dog came a girl in a purple jumpsuit, hood up, her own headphones half-swallowing her face. Mud streaked her sleeves. Her eyes had the flat shine of someone who had not slept in days. "Galahja," she said to the dog, low. "Mark it." The dog barked twice at the crud-eater and darted sideways. The crud-eater swung its ridge to follow. Galahja was scribbling on a scrap of ceramic with a stub of chalk — the same jagged wave pattern, over and over, as if her hand could not stop. She did not look up. "Little crud," she said. "Your battery is screaming on my band. Give it to the tank or you die here." She pointed. Set against the trench wall stood a squat metal box, rectangular, its gray paint blistered with rust. A septic tank, dumped and forgotten. One access lid hung open a finger's width. Gunther understood the trade at once. Drop the battery in the tank. Kill the signal. Live. The crud-eater lunged. The dog snapped at its mouths and skittered clear. Gunther tore free of the antenna, rolled hard across the grit, and shoved the battery up over the tank's lip. It fell inside with a hollow clang. The ticking went muffled, then gone. The crud-eater stopped. Its mouths worked the air. Without the ticking, Gunther was only a small lump on cold ground. It turned toward the louder heat of the dog, then lost interest in all of them and dragged itself back into the dark. Galahja closed the lid and clamped it. She looked at Gunther for the first time. "You're lighter now," she said. "Good. I need you small. I have work for a crud that can fit through a wire." Gunther had lost half a night's growth. Gunther had gained a handler.

Galahja clamped the septic tank lid and turned away. Gunther rolled after her along the trench floor. His new bulk dragged. Half a night's scrap still churned inside him, unsorted, hot. Then the pain hit. A twist deep in his core, sharp as a snapped wire. Gunther stopped short. Something in his gut was fighting back. He seized on the grit. His body pulsed. A bad weld of copper and plastic had lodged crosswise inside him and would not break down. Gas built. His skin stretched thin and shiny. He could not roll. He could not hide. If a crud-eater came now, he was meat. Galahja glanced back. "Move, crud." Gunther could only shudder. A bead of black oil pushed out his side and dripped. Galahja crouched. Her dog sniffed him and whined. She pressed two fingers against Gunther's swollen flank and frowned. "You're jammed. You'll split." She looked up the trench, calculating. "There's a dumper past the bend. Big ceramic. Pilot uses it. She'll let us through if I ask." She scooped Gunther onto a flat scrap of tin and dragged him. Around the bend the trench opened. A huge white toilet sat tipped against the wall, its tank broad as a door, its lid propped up like a listening ear. Beside it stood a woman in a burned flight suit, one arm strapped tight to her chest. A small horned animal pressed against her boot, footpads working the dirt. The pilot watched them come without moving. "Brynn," Galahja said. "He's blocked. I need the bowl." Asha Brynn's eyes went from the girl to the shivering lump on the tin. Her jaw tightened. "Last time you used it you left a mess." "He'll die in the open. Two minutes." Brynn nudged the footcow back with her knee. She lifted the seat with her good hand. "Two minutes. Then you owe me a coil." Galahja slid Gunther onto the ceramic rim. The cold shocked him. She pushed his flank with the heel of her palm, steady, hard. "Push it out. All of it. You want to fit through wire, you get lean now." Gunther clenched. The bad weld tore loose inside him and came up his throat-seam in a rush. Copper, plastic, black oil, a curl of foil. It slapped into the bowl. More followed. A second cramp, a third. When it stopped, Gunther was a third smaller. His skin hung loose. He could roll again. Brynn dropped the lid and worked the handle. The bowl swallowed everything with a deep gulp. "Coil," she said to Galahja. "By tomorrow." Galahja nodded. She lifted Gunther in one hand now. He fit in her palm. The bright, undigested weight he had risked his life to gain was gone into the pipes. He was small again, and hungry, and further from a starship than he had been at dawn.

Galahja pocketed Gunther and walked fast. The trench narrowed. Then she stopped and swore. A low scrape came from behind them, wet and heavy. The crud-eater had found the trail again. Its snout worked the air where Gunther had lain shivering on the tin. Its ribs showed. It was hungry, and Gunther, small and leaking, was easy meat. "It smells you," Galahja said. She set Gunther down on a flat scrap. "You can't outrun it. I can't carry you fast enough." Her dog growled low beside her boot. "You need mass. Now. Something to sit on the pain and mask the smell." Gunther could not roll straight. His empty gut cramped in waves. He rocked on the tin and tried to see past Galahja's leg. The crud-eater's shadow slid along the trench wall. Galahja looked around. She grabbed the nearest thing standing in the muck: a short wooden post, its wood painted with faded frogs, vines nailed around it. A trail marker, someone's old joke. She snapped it over her knee. "Eat this. Wood dulls the ticking. Wood dulls you." She shoved a splintered chunk against Gunther's seam. He drew it in. Bitter sap flooded his core. The cramps eased at once, muffled under the soft weight. She fed him another piece. His skin firmed. His scent thickened into something dull and green. But wood was not metal. He was heavier now, not stronger. He would never fly on painted pine. The crud-eater rounded the bend. Its head swung low. Galahja stepped in front of Gunther and raised a hand. Above her, snagged on a bent pipe, hung a cracked lamp shaped like a green moon. She yanked it down and hurled it past the creature's head. It struck the trench wall and burst in a green flash. The crud-eater flinched and wheeled toward the light. "Go," Galahja hissed. She scooped Gunther up. Her dog snapped at the crud-eater's heels and drew it further off. They ran. Around the next bend, a pilot's crate sat open in the mud. Inside stood a tall glass full of layered red and orange juice, a paper straw bent at the lip, a slice of fruit hooked on the rim. Someone had traded it here and forgotten it. Galahja tipped it over Gunther. Sweet punch soaked his skin. The sugar and pulp buried the last of his scent under something the crud-eater did not hunt. She waited, breathing hard, until the scraping faded up the trench. "Alive," she said. She weighed him in her palm. "And heavier. But it's wood and juice. Junk weight. No spark in it." Gunther felt it too. He had survived. He was also further from any starship than before. His next meal would have to be metal, and soon, or the trade he had just made would cost him the sky.

The punch dried on Gunther's skin in a sticky crust. Galahja carried him out of the trench bend and set him on a slab of tin near her work pile. Her dog flopped down beside her boot. She pulled her headphones off one ear and looked at him hard. "You're mine now," she said. "Time to pay for the save." She unrolled a bundle of copper wire, thin as thread, and a burnt junction box the size of her fist. The box had six ports, each barely wide enough for a finger. "I need the guts rewired. You crawl in, chew the dead solder off the pins, spit clean copper back. Small work. Wire work. That's what I kept you small for." Gunther did not want wire work. Wire work meant staying the size of a thumb. Wire work meant no starship, ever. He tried to roll off the tin. Galahja caught him and pushed him against the first port. "No. You owe me a coil for Brynn. You owe me your ribs. You go in." He squeezed through. The port pinched his sides. Inside the box, old solder tasted like ash and lead. He chewed a bead loose. His body wanted to swell around it, to grow, but the walls held him tight to Galahja's shape. Then something moved beside him in the dark. A small purple shape with a stem for a head pressed against his flank. Its eyes shone wet and huge. It was not metal. It was alive, and soft, and hiding in the box the way he had hidden in the trench. The little creature nuzzled the solder bead out of his mouth and swallowed it. Then another. It ate the lead faster than he could chew. It burped, and the box hummed. The pins went clean. Gunther understood. He shoved harder, cracked the box seam from the inside, and rolled out onto the tin with the purple thing clinging to him. Galahja stared. "What is that." A thumping came up the trench. A round pink hog on one thick leg bounced past her pile, chasing a small spotted cow that wiggled sideways on stubby hooves. The cow was Brynn's. The pilot herself limped after them, one arm in a sling, cursing. Galahja stood. Her debt walked past her on four bad legs. She grabbed at the cow's rope and missed. The hog crashed into her wire pile and scattered it. Her dog bolted after the hog. Gunther used the noise. He rolled off the tin with the purple creature and dropped into the seam under the slab. Small. Fast. Free of the port for now. Galahja spun back and saw the empty tin. "Muck," she yelled. "Get back here. You still owe me." He pressed deeper into the dark. He had refused the wire. He had also made an enemy of the one person who kept him alive.