Kim Tuckey-Yatsen, a poor twelve year old boy living in the housing projects of Los Angeles, visits the Cliffs of Monica to scope out Antalou aliens—creatures with black synthetic skin, rippling muscles, extendable necks, and long talons. He leaves them messages explaining he knows what they do and requesting their services. The first 98 notes he gives out go unanswered, but the 99th alien comes to visit him in his small room. Having researched the Antalou, Kim knows that many are professional assassins. Kim wants the alien to kill James Ortega-Mambay, a man in charge of regulating overpopulation, who has demanded that Kim’s mother abort Kim’s unborn sister due to the one-child policy. Although Kim only has two hundred dollars to give the Antalou—far less than it received for other exploits—the alien still tracks down Ortega-Mambay. While the alien refuses to kill Ortega-Mambay, it intimidates him into saving Kim’s sister. The alien returns to Kim’s home and asks how he knew so much about the Antalou—after all, intelligence agencies from five other worlds had not been able to identify it. Kim shows the alien the research he has done on the Antalou (not for school), particularly on the importance of kinship in their culture. Kim offers his money to the alien, but the alien refuses payment. Kim performs an Antalouan gesture, meaning “obligation to blood,” and asks the alien if it has any family. The alien, touched, replies that it doesn’t, that having no family is a choice many Antalou must make given their line of work. Kim also asks the alien what it’s like to kill. Kim’s family receives an exception from Ortega-Mambay; Kim’s sister is born. Five years later, a trunk arrives for Kim, containing rare relics from across the galaxy—and the original note he had given the alien at the Cliffs of Monica. The alien, who recently passed away, has bequeathed his fortune to Kim, giving the Tuckey-Yatsens a more spacious home, proper medical care, and better educational opportunities. In addition, the alien has left its specialized weapons in Kim’s name, which wait for him on Saturn’s great moon.