PART ONE: Das Rheingold
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Fafner slithered through the door of his adopted home, an abandoned and damaged apartment building. He squatted on his eight tentacles while his eye stalks, sitting above a cruel beak, swiveled left then right making a rapid survey of the area. He wasn't surprised when he didn't spot any activity, he rarely did. Only a few mortals lived in the area. All he saw was a desolate and mostly destroyed urban street. A hundred yards away, the Rhine River reflected the morning sun. Buds about to burst into leaves covered the few widely-scattered trees.
He faced another day with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to steal and that took a toll on his psyche. His criminal talents moldered without any felonious exercise. Who would have thought that he, the universe's most successful criminal, would spend endless days without committing a crime? His motto had always been, 'A day without a felony is a day wasted.' He desperately wanted something to do; anything to end the overwhelming boredom. Except honest work, of course; he had no intention of going that far, not when it would ruin his perfect record of never having worked on an honest project.
When Fafner had escaped from an Inter-Galactic Police ambush, his damaged get-away ship managed to make it as far as this benighted parallel universe. His ultra-sophisticated craft had been shot up and mangled in the chase. Just before the ship exploded, he transported to the desolate surface and now he was trapped. He had lived here for three solar rotations so far. With no hope of a rescue, he had what amounted to a life sentence and his race typically lived hundreds of years unless shortened by treachery or assassination. By now, the police must have assumed he had died. As a consequence, he would no longer be the most wanted criminal in fifteen galaxies, five of which he’d never been in.
Standing seven feet tall and weighing over four hundred pounds had disadvantages on this planet because he didn't fit through most doorways and the gravity, much heavier than on his home world Zaftan 31B, made movement difficult. The planet was so different from his cloud-covered home world: there was too much light here and it hurt his eyeballs. He ran a tentacle over his body to smooth the green-tinged slime that covered his gray-black, rubberish skin.
He moved down the rubble-strewn road to the nearest intersection and stopped to decide what to do. The deserted streets were expected because
the handful of mortals who lived here always hid when he moved about. He suspected his size and his personality — merely hostile when he was in a good mood — scared the puny creatures.
He sensed movement and rotated one eye stalk to the right. A small, hairless creature meandered down a side street. Fafner recognized an alien from the Nibelung System.
Normally reticence about dealing with an alien from a different race, he decided to speak with the creature. Perhaps, he could uncover information about a felonious possibility. "Halt! I have speech with you" Fafner said in the grotesque language of the mortals
The alien stopped and waited for Fafner to join him.
"Greetings. Come. I buy drink.” Since the Nibelung understood what Fafner said, he also must have lived here for a time.
Fafner shoved his bulk into a nearby tavern and squatted at an empty table. The pale-green Nibelung sat on a chair, an expectant look on his pinched face that featured red eyes with yellow irises and holes instead of ears and a nose. He wore a leather vest and denim pants without shoes.
Mortals always gagged and threw up in Fafner’s presence, but the nibelung didn’t seem to notice the smell. Perhaps his nose holes weren't as sensitive as a mortal's sense of smell. "My name Fafner. Known as Magnificent. Your name is what?"
