Within seven days, the terrifying reputation of the Cosmic Star-Locust Plague had completely collapsed across forty-five solar systems.
In its place rose an unstoppable culinary craze: Crispy Space-Shrimp & Cold Sweet-Spring Corn Beer!
Every evening at six o’clock sharp, when the shift whistles blew at the White Dwarf Shipyards in System #31, the asteroid mines of System #20, and the new agricultural reclamation towns of Systems #41 through #45, hundreds of billions of workers poured into the neon-lit Dry-Well Night Markets.
Every street corner smelled of sizzling garlic, honey glaze, and Sichuan peppercorns. Off-duty miners sat around folding iron tables in their clean bathhouse robes, cracking open frosty green bottles of Sweet-Spring Golden-Corn Beer and piling up mountain-high plates of crunchy fried Star-Locust tails.
“Waiter! Two more five-pound buckets of the Extra-Spicy Mala Space-Shrimp, and another crate of cold corn beer!”
At the central night market of Planet #46-B—a newly reclaimed border world on the edge of the Barren Dust Sector—a burly Rank 5 miner named Big-Hammer Zhao wiped spicy red oil from his chin and slammed down three paper Grain-Notes.
The night-market stall owner, a former refugee from Planet #46-B who had opened his own fry-stand three days ago, smiled apologetically as he scraped the bottom of his giant iron wok.
