"About a month. Most of us have to be heavily restrained well before that if someone's starving us on purpose; we're not well-known for impulse control," he explains. It was a painful process, and one Devin sincerely did not want to relive.

Devin takes bites between the conversation, not exactly sedate but not inhaling the meal, either. Fai was a good cook. "My planet is called Earth, despite three-quarters being covered in water," he says wryly. "Take up the complaint of excess of continents with plate tectonics. What's special about Outo?"