Fallen Dragon

Ebrey Zhang had a huge number of valid reasons why Memu Bay was in its current perilous state. He was very eager to tell Simon each and every one of them.

"Forget it," Simon said curtly. "I know exactly why this mess has built up. Not that knowing is going to help you much before the board of inquiry."

Ebrey Zhang did his best not to scowl.

"Did you round up the leisure company people?" Simon asked.

"Yes. And it wasn't easy. My platoons get into difficulty every time they step out of their barracks."

"I'm not prepared to tolerate this situation. It will interfere with my investigation. Can you enforce a proclamation of martial law?"

"Probably," Ebrey Zhang said. "It'll be difficult in some districts."

"Declare it. Order a curfew for six o'clock that will be in place for twenty-four hours. Authorize the Skins to dart anyone found on the streets after that time. Close down all vehicle traffic, and limit domestic datapool access to entertainment and official calls only. Any acts of resistance or aggression against us are to be suppressed by lethal force. One collateral necklace will be activated per incident."

"Very well. But we'll probably have trouble getting people back to work afterward. We might not be able to meet our asset quota."

"Irrelevant; I've already written it off. Now, I want to see the prisoners."

The interviews followed a pattern. Initial superficial defiance, which swiftly faded when the interviewee realized just how serious Simon was. He began to learn what had happened.

Josep Raichura and Raymond Jang had been taken on at the start of the last season—popular guys, who never lacked for female company. Management couldn't explain why there were no files. With their cooperation Simon's personal AS swiftly tracked down the substitutions. Implantation of the ghosts was little short of miraculous: they had birth certificates, school grades, parents (who had similar digital histories), bank accounts, credit coin bills, medical records, tax records, insurance policies, apartment rent agreements. They were more real to the datapool and the AS than half of the people belonging to Memu Bay's underclass.

Verbal interrogation confirmed Josep and Ray had left the company around the time Z-B's starships had arrived. No one could remember the exact date. It had been a confused time.

They'd not been seen since. Nobody had managed to contact them.

The instructors who were friendly with them believed they were from out of town. One of the hinterland settlements. Definitely not local, though.

Someone thought they lived in a suburb close to the Nium estuary. They certainly had a female housemate; several instructors had hit on her in the marina bars. Possibly called Denise. The AS immediately began generating an image of her from their descriptions.

"Find the house," Simon ordered. "I want every estate around that estuary visited by Skins. Physically verify the occupants of each house, apartment and hole in the ground. I want a complete verbal history of occupancy for the last five years, which they're to cross-reference with the AS."

The curfew had been in place for two hours when fifteen platoons began the door-to-door search. So far the proclamation of martial law had proved remarkably successful. Memu Bay's inhabitants had realized from Zhang's announcement that he wasn't bluffing. Most people started heading home by four o'clock. The fact that the roads really did shut down at six caught a few motorists out. The traffic regulator AS disabled every vehicle other than bicycles. Drivers hurried home on foot. Several were darted by Skins. Die-hard protesters outside the Town Hall and various Skin barracks were darted without warning at one second past six.

Simon and Braddock received a call about a possible suspect location at eleven-fifteen and immediately took a helicopter out to the Nium estuary estate. It was a bungalow rented from a property agency. Nobody answered the door when the Skin had rung the bell. When he asked a neighbor he was told that a girl called Denise lived in it by herself; her two male housemates had left several weeks ago. None of that corresponded with the information that the AS trawled out from the datapool concerning the bungalow.

Five Skins were standing guard in the garden when Simon arrived along with a small team of Z-B technicians. A further three Skins were inside. Simon and Braddock gave the bungalow a quick inspection. Someone had abandoned their breakfast. A dish of cereal and a mug of coffee were left on the table in the kitchen. Two slices of toast stood in a stainless-steel rack, untouched.

Braddock sniffed at the coffee mug and pulled back fast, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "Several days old, I'd say."

"We'll go for an expert opinion." Simon told one of the technicians to analyze the food to see if he could determine how long it had been standing. "It would have been early morning here when Josep was captured at the spaceport," he mused as the technician took a sample of the semisolid cereal.

Another technician was examining the bedrooms and bathroom for skin and hair samples.

The very frightened neighbor said she thought Denise worked at a school. No, she didn't know which one, but it could be a playschool.

"I want every head teacher in the city brought in," Simon instructed Zhang. "Right now."

"I've got a DNA match," the technician reported. "A skin sample from one of the disused bedrooms belongs to Josep."

"Excellent," Simon purred. It was coming together beautifully. Of all the challenges, puzzles and pursuits he'd been involved in over the years, nothing had given him greater satisfaction than this. Some small part of his mind was childishly excited by the prospect of encountering an alien, even though that encounter would bring enormous upheaval, possibly even war, given the alien's recent actions. That made him pause. Interstellar war was impossible, surely? If commerce was impractical, then invasion and conquest must surely be out of the question. Then why was the alien so hostile?

He knew the answer was close. If the facts could just be put together in the right order...

Mrs. Potchansky was the nineteenth head teacher to be brought before Simon. It was half-past-three in the morning, and he'd resorted to far too much strong coffee. The caffeine was slowly abrading his temper, and contributing to a subtle depression. It was one thing to be the butt of smartmouth insults; but he could actually sense the naked thoughts of each teacher, know how much he was genuinely despised and hated. That could wound a man's soul.

"Does Denise work for you?" Simon asked as the old woman stood in front of him.

"I don't know any Denise." It was a perfect schoolmistress voice, instantly instilling a sense of complete inferiority in any listener. She was one of the few teachers to arrive fully dressed. Simon imagined even the Skins would be made to wait until she had chosen appropriate clothes and put them on in her own time.

"Ah," he murmured contentedly. He tented his fingers and rested his chin on the apex. A pane on his desk lit up to show the image that the AS had generated from the descriptions of the lovelorn diving instructors. "Is this her?"

"If I don't know her, then I can hardly identify her, can I?"

"But you did know her. And it's what you think that is interesting."

Mrs. Potchansky's face remained perfectly composed. Alarm shivered through her mind.

"Did you know what she was connected with, which resistance movement?" His DNI was scrolling the woman's file.

"If this farce is over I'll be going home now. I trust you'll take me back with the same alacrity with which I was brought here."

"Sit down!" Simon barked.

Mrs. Potchansky fussed around with the chair, deliberately taking her time. Her thoughts were settling into a steely determination.

"When did you last see her?" Simon asked.

"You know this person's name, yet you're not sure what she looks like. That's very odd."

"Very. Especially if you were to check your school's records, because she's not in any of your files. Nor is she in any file we can trawl out of the datapool."

"That must make it difficult for you to persecute her."

"When did she leave? Please."

"No."

"Very well, you're free to go. I'll have a car take you home."

Mrs. Potchansky gave him a suspicious look. "Why?"

"Because you're obviously a tough old lady who isn't going to tell me anything."

"Why?"

"After the car drops you off it'll pick up someone who will be more cooperative." The indigo file scrolled down across his view of Mrs. Potchansky. He picked a name. "Jedzella, perhaps."

"What a pathetically crude attempt at blackmail. You'll do no such thing."

"We killed your son. I expect you think of us as barbarians who answer to no one on this world. You would be correct in that; I'm not even accountable to anyone on Earth. And I am desperate to find this girl. Truly desperate. The children will tell me who she is and where she came from. Do you want to put them through that? Because I will ask them if you make me."

"I haven't seen her since the weekend," Mrs. Potchansky said.

"Thank you. Now tell me all about her."

* * *

The huge Pan-Skyways cargo jet taxied slowly through the miserable gray rain that was saturating Durrell Spaceport. It turned onto the parking apron and braked to a halt. Steam shimmered off the nacelles as the spinning fans wound down to a stop.

A robot tractor nuzzled up to the front-wheel bogie and engaged its locking clamps. It began to tow the plane into a nearby hangar. The doors slid shut behind it, and it stood all alone in the enclosed space, dripping on the concrete floor. Pan-Skyways hangar staff brought a pair of airstairs up to the cabin hatch, and the two flight crew emerged. They were followed by Lawrence Newton in his full sergeant's uniform. He paused on the top step, conscious of the cameras dotted round the hangar. Z-B required any asset cargo flown by a civilian airline to be accompanied by a company representative. The AS would be checking his face and matching it with his file and the assignment orders issued by Ebrey Zhang's office.

Colin Schmidt waited for him at the bottom of the airstairs, a small smile playing over his face. "Welcome to Durrell."

Lawrence put his arm around his old friend's shoulders. "Good to be here."

They walked along the side of the fuselage to the rear of the plane. "I thought you were joking when you called," Colin said. "A whole RL-thirty-three pod. Holy crap! This I have to see for myself."

The clamshell doors that made up the aircraft's tail section were hinging apart. Colin ducked under them to stand in the widening gap. The cargo pod filled half of the cavernous fuselage, a long pearl-white composite cylinder resting on a cradle.

"I guess you weren't joking," Colin said. He looked around to make sure none of the civilian hangar staff were nearby, then lowered his voice. "Okay, what the hell is in it?"

Lawrence opened the flap on his breast pocket and took out a gnarled lump of rock. It glinted dully in the hangar's lightcones. Colin took it from him, examining the lump gingerly.

"It's argentite," Lawrence said. "That's a silver mineral."

"Silver," Colin said. He looked from the little chunk in his hand to the cargo pod, then back to Lawrence. "You are joking."

"No. What we have here is about forty tons of argentite with a very high silver content."

"Where in God's name did it come from?"

"Out in the hinterlands. I thought I saw it last time I was here. Nobody else in the platoon recognized it, so I kept quiet."

"Shit." Colin was laughing, hand over his mouth. "You old fraud, Lawrence, you told me we'd need to smuggle a backpack up to orbit."

"If I'd said a fully loaded Xianti you would never have agreed. Now you have an incentive. Can you get this into orbit?"

"Yes." Colin was still laughing. "Oh, God, yes. Forty tons of silver! Lawrence, you are goddamn unbelievable."

"Forty tons of silver mineral. We'll have to refine it when we get back to Earth."

Colin nodded, suddenly sober. "Of course. I'll have to make sure it's flown down to Cairns; after that we can get it offbase easily enough. But, Lawrence, I don't know how you get this mineral stuff refined. What do we need?"

"One step at a time. Let's focus on getting it up to the Koribu for now, shall we? Have you got me my pilot?"

"Yes, yes, Gordon Dreyer, he's our man. Needs money, and smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it afterward."

"Fine. What about getting the cargo pod through security? Its contents are on file as fusion reactor parts. It can't go through any sort of scanner."

"I can handle that. There are hundreds of these identical cargo pods coming in and out of the spaceport. It's just playing the shell game, but on a much bigger scale, that's all. I've got the verification codes, I can enter a full clearance file. The AS will never know the difference."

"Like going over the fence again, huh?"

"Like going over the fence." Colin was staring at the pod again, his expression hungry. "Damn it, Lawrence, I already know the house I'm going to buy with this. I saw it once, on the Riviera, it was a white stone mansion with gardens over a hundred and fifty years old. Fit for a Board member."

Lawrence felt a surprisingly large twinge of guilt as he listened to his friend's daydream. But the choice had been made back when he was dreaming the dragon's dreams. All his old loyalties were over now.

Gordon Dreyer arrived six hours before his flight was scheduled to take off. Lawrence hadn't met him before, but he knew the type well enough: late forties with a highly secure job that sounded glamorous but was actually routine, and wasn't going to take him anywhere careerwise. Two marriages behind him, Colin said, and the courts diverted a big slice of his salary to pay for them. He was bitter about the rulings. He partied hard. Drank a little too much. Gambled above his credit limit In the flesh, Dreyer's weight was pushing the upper limit permitted by Z-B's fitness requirement. His dark hair was meticulously cut and styled to hide its thinness—v-writing follicle treatments were currently beyond his means. He shook Lawrence's hand firmly enough, and played it cool when the deal was explained. Only the eagerness with which he accepted betrayed his true character.

As with all pilots, Dreyer shadowed the flight preparation. It started with a review of the Xianti's flight-engineering file, ensuring its performance was up to the specified levels and that standard maintenance had been carried out. His authorization was added to the flightworthiness log, which would allow the spaceplane to be moved to the next stage: cargo loading.

Gordon Dreyer went to inspect the cargo pod in the preflight integration hangar. Colin Schmidt was the lieutenant in charge of the logistics that morning, meeting all the pilots who were readying their craft for the daily flight up to the starships. They walked along the row of sealed cargo pods, discussing any problems or special requirements. At the end he presented them with the security verification file, detailing the inspection process for each item of cargo. Dreyer added his authorization to the file and thanked Colin for doing his job.

The RL33 pod was loaded into the Xianti, which was then towed out to its fueling bay. Gordon Dreyer went off to the pilot's locker room to get ready while the cryogenic tanks were being chilled down, then filled with liquid hydrogen.

Lawrence and Colin rode over to the makeshift medical center in the terminal building.

"The hospital's been off-limits since the blast," Colin explained. "They're taking care of some senior officers from fleet intelligence in there. Security won't allow anyone else near the place."

They found an empty room and began sticking medical modules to Lawrence's torso. His arm was then covered by a dermal membrane sheath, with more modules stuck over it.

"I wish you didn't look so healthy," Colin complained. "You're supposed to be a priority medevac case."

"I heard that in old wars soldiers used to eat the gunpowder from their bullets. It made them look really sick."

"You want some energized explosive to chew on?"

"No, thanks." He pulled on a medical division coverall. With its short sleeves, everyone could see the membrane and small modules. It should convince the ground crew who saw him embarking. Prime entered his record files in Memu Bay, implanting an attack during an urban patrol, which had burned through his Skin, leaving him unfit for duty.

The fueling bay had a small operations center with a rank of darkened glass windows that looked out over the big delta-shaped Xianti. Stairs in one corner of the center led down to the covered bridge, which had extended out to the spaceplane cabin's airlock.

Gordon Dreyer was already in the center when Lawrence and Colin entered. He was talking to a security officer, who handed him the flight's communication key.

"Do you need any help with that arm?" Dreyer asked.

"No, sir," Lawrence said. "I can manage, thank you."

A camera was fixed to the top of the bridge entrance. Lawrence could feel the sweat on his forehead as he walked underneath. At least it added credibility to his supposed injury. Dreyer was impressively calm as they walked along the bridge.

The cabin hatch slid shut and Lawrence let out a sharp breath of relief. Sneaking around like this wasn't his arena.

Give me head-to-head combat any day.

"Home free, eh?" Dreyer said. "Sit yourself down, and leave the rest to me."

Lawrence chose a seat directly behind the pilot, where he could see the console displays. Dreyer was absorbed by the final checklist. Three minutes later he agreed with the space-plane's AS pilot that they were ready to lift off. The Rolls-Royce turbojets came alive with a resonant thrumming, as much felt as heard, and they rolled out of the fueling bay. The flight to orbit was identical to every other Lawrence had been on, though it was interesting to see the console displays and have a genuine view out through the narrow windshield rather than a camera image on a seatback screen.

"Eighty minutes to rendezvous," Dreyer announced as the two tail rockets finished their injection burn.

"Sounds good." Lawrence picked one of the medical modules off his arm, leaned forward and pressed it to Dreyer's neck.

"What arr—" The pilot lost consciousness. His body remained in the seat, held by the safety straps, but his arms gradually floated up until they were hanging above the console;

Lawrence used his d-written neural cluster to establish a link with the Xianti's network. Prime went active and erased the AS pilot program, assuming complete control of the spaceplane.

"Are you all right back there?" Lawrence asked.

"I never knew freefall was this awful," Denise replied from her hidden nest in the cargo pod. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Try not to be, try very hard."

"Any more advice you want to give?"

"Let's get you out of there, I need to suit up." Prime relayed a camera image of the payload bay to one of the flight console panes. The cargo pod almost filled it, leaving only a two-meter gap between itself and the cabin bulkhead. Lawrence saw a circle of plastic peel back on the end of the pod. Something moved inside. A human figure in a silver-gray leotard of a spacesuit crawled out with very slow, uncertain movements.

"Nothing moves right," Denise complained.

Lawrence hoped she wasn't linked to a cabin camera; she'd see him grinning. "You'll get used to it. Just remember inertia is still the same up here."

A short, flexible tether clipped to her harness attached her to the fat box containing his Skin. Once she was out of the pod and anchored in the short gap, she began to pull it out after her. Lawrence told Prime to open the outer hatch of the payload bay airlock. It took Denise several minutes to maneuver the box inside. There wasn't enough room for her as well, so Lawrence cycled the airlock and pulled it out into the cabin while she waited in the payload bay.

He already had his legs in the Skin when she emerged and tugged her face mask off. "I shouldn't have eaten," she groaned. "I shouldn't have drunk, either."

"Would you have managed your original scenario in that condition?"

She glared at him. "I'd have done it. I still can."

"Yeah. Well, let's go for the nonlethal option first"

* * *

Memu Bay's entire complement of twelve TVL88 helicopters flew across the plateau just as dawn arrived. Simon watched the landscape skim past from the cockpit of the lead craft. Stationary whorls of cloud surrounded each of the peaks, leaking streams of mist down through the foothill valleys from where they gushed out across the plains and forests. The scene was primordial, with trees and ridges sticking out of the eerie white mantle.

"Satellite's coming over again," the SK2 said over the link from Durrell. "There's not much available in the visible spectrum. That damn fog's covering the entire province."

Simon told his AS to show him the satellite imagery on his mirrorshades. A few forested hills slid across the display, separated by the placid lakes of mist. Infrared cut in, giving away little. Several dozen fuzzy pink patches shimmered under the white surface. They were roughly where Arnoon village ought to be.

During the night it had been raining over the plateau. The satellite had been unable to penetrate the thick, dark clouds. Simon had called up old images, studying the little community. All he'd seen was a standard rustic settlement with hardly any sign of high technology other than its cybernetic woolen mills.

His AS had begun trawling the datapool for all available information on Arnoon Province. There was a lot of it, but so far nothing relevant. When it sent askpings out to the village's few nodes it found nothing but standard domestic management pearls linked in, some of them generations out of date.

All perfectly normal.

However: the Dixon network had dropped out of the datapool three days ago. Memu Bay's telecom utility company couldn't explain why. They hadn't sent an engineering team out to the plateau yet; the civil situation had pushed it way down their priority list.

And there was a lost patrol up there somewhere. It had left three days ago. At first Simon was delighted when his AS found the reference, thinking he could simply send them directly to Arnoon. But their transponders didn't respond to the communications satellite. The AS noted the patrol was scheduled to last two days. Yet no one had noticed when they didn't return. Further investigation revealed a major data discontinuity in the headquarters AS. It had issued the assignment, but had no associated progress monitors. There wasn't even an established command hierarchy. They'd been subverted.

When Simon called in Captain Bryant to ask him what he knew of his missing platoon, the befuddled officer hadn't known what he was talking about. Platoon 435NK9 had been reassigned out of his command.

"How can you misplace an entire platoon?" a disgusted Simon had asked Braddock.

A group of conical mounds crept into view ahead of the helicopters. The mist was patchy here, finally starting to dissipate as the sun rose higher.

"Dixon's straight ahead, sir," the pilot called over the whoop of the rotor blades. Simon canceled the mirrorshades display.

The TVL88 squadron cleared the slag heaps. They slowed as they skirted the little town, probing the whole area with active sensors.

"What in God's name happened?" the SK2 asked.

The mist had almost cleared, revealing the devastated buildings. Nearly a quarter of the houses were gone. They'd all exploded, scattering debris over a wide area.

"Some kind of battle," Simon told his clone sibling. "Those buildings were all deliberately targeted. I can't think why."

"Sir!" The pilot was pointing ahead.

"Take us over," Simon said.

There was a burned-out jeep in the middle of the main street. Another jeep was embedded in the side of one of the few intact buildings remaining around the town square.

"At least we know what happened to the platoon now," Simon said as the helicopter circled around them. There was no sign of any Skin suit in either of the wrecks. "Okay, I've seen enough," he told the pilot. "Get us over to Arnoon."

Pain was a constant now, squeezing every part of his body. Simon refused to let the doctor administer the drugs that would banish it, keeping his mind sharp. He was sure the SF9 simply didn't appreciate the enormity of the alien encounter, continuing to treat it like some fascinating intellectual puzzle. Typical of that batch's imperturbable poise.

Simon had perceived Josep's aura firsthand, experienced his determination and resolve. The only way they were ever going to survive this encounter was if they matched the alien's drive. He couldn't allow the chance to slip their grasp. The potential of the nanonic system was staggering. In Zantiu-Braun's possession it could be used to elevate the entire human race.

Despite Josep's being an enemy, Simon envied what he had become. His enhanced form was a magnificent ideal for humans to aspire to, wonderfully superior to anything germ-line v-writing promised.

Few moments in history were truly pivotal. But this was going to be one of them. Simon had to take part, to contribute, to disallow failure—particularly through weakness. Acquiring the nanonic system had to be made to happen. Fortunately, his immobility didn't prevent datapool access. And the pain, constant, persecuting, diabolical pain drove him onward.

His DNI scrolled down file after file as the SF9 flew on toward Arnoon, information thrown up by his AS as it hunted for oversights and mistakes. Somewhere below the knees his legs were itching abominably, adding to his suffering and anger. Finally the clues he knew to exist began emerging from the datapool. "You were wrong about the patrol," he said.

"What do you mean?" the SF9 asked.

"We don't know what happened to them."

"We just saw the remnants," the SF9 chided. "The alien or its allies wiped them out because they were on their way to Arnoon."

"And then used Prime to cover it up, to erase the platoon from our data systems."

"Yes."

"But the cover-up was in place before the platoon left Somebody arranged it so that Four-three-five-NK-nine could visit the plateau without anyone knowing what they were doing. If the alien wanted to stop any of our people from visiting Arnoon Province, it could simply use Prime to change their orders. We'd never know."

"What are you suggesting?"

"There's another factor here." A new file appeared, highlighted by the cross-reference program that the AS had run on Platoon 435NK9. Specific information scrolled down. "It would seem that the platoon's sergeant has been to Arnoon Province before. He was in a similar patrol the last time we were here. Are you going to tell me that's a coincidence?"

"It's improbable," the SF9 admitted. "Can you datamine him?"

Simon instructed his personal AS to launch an askping trawl for all files concerning Lawrence Newton.

* * *

The TVL88s thundered in over the treetops to surround Arnoon village, weapons extended. Downwash from their powerful rotors tore at the mist, breaking through the central clearing in seconds. The last strands of cloying vapor streaked past the shaggy wooden A-frames, exposing them to the targeting sensors. A young woman in a cream sweater and dark jeans was standing on the balcony of one of the houses, gripping the handrail to steady herself in the miniature hurricane.

She was the only person the sensors could detect. The A-frames were all warm, their domestic appliances drawing power. But nobody was inside.

Five helicopters, including Simon's, landed on the dew-soaked grassmoss, while the others spread out and began scanning the surrounding forest. Skins deployed rapidly, fanning out across the meadow. Their carbine muzzles were extended; each of them had a rack of smart missiles.

Simon climbed down out of the helicopter, holding on to the front of his loose leather jacket as it flapped about. Three Skins fell in around him as he walked toward the woman.

She came down the steps from the balcony, her lustrous aura giving her the appearance of some biblical angel. "Simon Roderick, I presume. I'm Jacintha. Welcome to Arnoon village."

"I thought there'd be more people here."

"They're all out there in the forest somewhere. They ran away when we found out you were coming."

"Why?"

"We're frightened of you."

"Interesting. I find you quite daunting. You know you have a remarkable aura."

Jacintha frowned. "Oh, I understand. You must have a magnetic sense. Is that how you caught Josep?"

"Let's say it's how I learned to be very careful around him. Not that it was of much help ultimately. A lot of people were killed when he committed suicide."

"And your collateral necklaces kill a lot of people for no reason."

"I'm not here to justify what I've done, nor argue with you about who owns the moral high ground. I'd simply like to meet the alien, please."

"I'm sorry," Jacintha said. "You can't."

"You know I will. If you defeat all twelve helicopters and these platoons—which I doubt you're actually capable of— we will simply come back with more. And we will keep coming back until we finally get through to it."

It wasn't her rather pitying smile that disconcerted him, but her thoughts. She actually felt sorry for him. It was the kind of sympathy an adult would express during an infant's tantrum.

In return he couldn't help but admire her. It was nothing sexual, rather an appreciation for a perfectly balanced personality. The SK2 was right: if only everybody had her intellectual depth.

"You could send a thousand starships full of Skins and weapons," Jacintha said. "It would make no difference."

Finally, Simon began to understand. "It's not here." His mind began to meld all the information that he'd gathered with a speed that was almost vertiginous. "Memu Bay is an anarchistic mess; you can take anything through without us knowing. The spaceplane! You weren't going to blow up a starship..."

"Newton was here," the SK2 said. "Here at the spaceport. We medevaced him this morning."

Jacintha cocked her head to one side, listening to a silent voice.

"Shit!" Simon gasped, as his DNI scrolled the files. "Stop him," he told the SK2. "Stop the flight. Keep Newton away from the starship."

"Too late," Jacintha said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"I'm showing a level-two hydraulics failure," Lawrence reported. Prime converted his voice to an exact replica of Gordon Dreyer's clipped accent for the audio link with Koribu. "The payload bay doors aren't responding."

"God, Dreyer, can't you people stick to simple maintenance procedures?" the Koribu's flight controller complained. "You're supposed to oversee flightworthiness. There's no point to having pilots otherwise. Purge and reactivate the system."

"Copy that. Attempting reactivation."

Amber graphics began a slow dance on the console panes as Prime produced a digital simulacrum of the hydraulics system being reactivated. Lawrence let the phony procedure run twice so that the telemetry being received by the Koribu would show he was doing his best to rectify the problem.

Through the windshield he could see the massive starship floating 350 meters away. They were level with the fusion drive section, where sunlight broke apart into soft scintillations over the crinkled thermal foil that protected the deuterium tanks. Three more Xiantis were strung out in front of them, their payload bay doors fully open. The cargo pods that they'd boosted up to orbit had risen out on cradles ready for collection, as if they were some kind of offering held out by metal fingers. Engineering shuttles like black chrome beetles were sliding round the spaceplanes, puffs of dusty gray gas flaring out of their reaction control nozzles as they aligned themselves to pluck the pods away.

"Still no response," Lawrence said.

"Ah, goddamnit, all right, Dreyer," the Koribu's flight controller said. "Clearing you for docking. Bring it in to our maintenance bay. The AS is assigning you an approach path. And congratulations for screwing up today's schedule."

"Always a pleasure."

Prime acknowledged receipt of the new flight path. Hypergolic fuel ignited in the reaction control nozzles, gently pushing them around the starship. Lawrence saw ribbons of sulfur vapor flare out to envelop the entire nose as the Xianti began a slow roll. The starship gradually slipped from view through the windshield. Sensors showed him the Koribu's cylindrical cargo section drifting past below. Beyond the silos, the long maintenance bay doors were opening up. A row of small lights lining the rim came on, banishing shadows from the ribbed metal cavity.

With Prime controlling their maneuver, the Xianti glided smoothly into place directly above the maintenance bay. Its undercarriage doors folded back. The reaction control nozzles fired shorter and shorter bursts as they eliminated all momentum relative to the giant starship.

On the maintenance bay floor, mechanical mandibles flexed themselves upward, searching out the load pins in the Xianti's undercarriage. Latches snapped shut, securing the spaceplane.

"We're in," Lawrence murmured. The mandibles were retracting, pulling the spaceplane down. They both watched the rim lights slide up past the windshield.

Denise turned to the images from the spaceplane cameras. "Where are the umbilicals?"

"Just wait," Lawrence said.

The Xianti trembled slightly as they came to rest in the cradles. Secondary mandibles, coiled by tubes and cables, wormed their way up to nuzzle at the spacecraft's umbilical sockets. Power, data, coolant, communications and hydraulics were all connected and confirmed.

Prime used the datalink to load itself in the maintenance bay network, erasing the AS and establishing control over all the local systems. Subversion on such a massive level was immediately detected by the Koribu's principal AS, which threw up a firewall around the affected network. It also cut power and environmental feeds to the section of the starship around the maintenance bay and closed the first set of emergency pressure doors along the main axial corridor. The section's backup power supply cut in automatically, allowing the network and most ancillary systems to function. There was nothing Prime could do about recovering environmental feeds, although there was enough oxygen to sustain the crew trapped behind the sealed pressure doors.

The maintenance bay airlock tube telescoped out of the wall toward the Xianti's cabin hatch. Lawrence held an e-c pistol in one hand. His carbine was already extended. "Stay behind me," he told Denise as the hatch rim locks engaged.

"Yes, Commander."

Her tone irked him. "We've been over this. That suit of yours is good, but it can't take as much punishment as Skin. And I know they have weapons on board."

"Yes, all right," Denise grumbled.

The cabin hatch slid open, revealing the twenty-meter length of airlock tube on the other side. It was dark, with orange strobes blinking at the far end. Prime supplied Lawrence's tactical grid with camera images from every part of the starship it had gained control over. The crewmen in the cargo section were confused. They knew the environmental systems were off; amber warning strobes were flashing in every compartment. All of the refuge chamber doors and lifeboat hatches had swung open. Lighting had gone to full power-save reduction mode, dimming the corridors and narrow crawlways to a near-claustrophobic level. There was no personal communication with the rest of the ship—Prime was blocking that. Yet the AS seemed to be telling them everything was fine, and this was just a localized glitch.

Lawrence kicked off and glided cleanly down the middle of the tunnel, controlling his flight by occasionally flipping his free hand on the tube wall. Denise followed after him, bouncing her way along with a running commentary of curses.

He had to use the manual hatch release at the other end. Two crewmen were floating just behind. They saw the Skin float out and flipped gracefully in midair, shooting away like frightened fish. Lawrence darted both of them. They kept on going for several meters before colliding with the compartment walls with a heavy impact. Then they were spinning flaccidly, limbs protruding in all directions.

Lawrence pushed past them and dived into the long corridor leading out of the compartment. It had a D-shaped cross section, with a ladder running along the curve's apex. He slapped at the rungs, propelling himself along. Denise was a couple of meters behind him.

The axial corridor was at the end, a broad cylinder with bulky environment ducts running down the walls. It ran the entire length of the starship at the center of the stress structure, linking the rear fusion drive section to the forward compression drive, with radial corridors connecting to every other pressurized section. Emergency pressure doors were positioned at forty-meter intervals along it, big reinforced composite circles that were normally kept open.

Five crewmen were drifting around the closest one to Lawrence as his helmet rose through the hatchway into the axial corridor. Two of them were trying to get it to open, while one was pressed against the viewport in the center trying to see into the next section. Lawrence lifted his wrist: he could feel the tiny wriggling of the dispenser mechanism's muscles as the darts spat out.

Denise crawled her way along to the emergency door and pressed a ring of energy focus ribbon against it. Lawrence was pushing the unconscious crewmen away.

"Get clear," Denise told him. She sent a code to the ribbon. The pulse of raw energy it emitted sliced clean through the door. Thick black smoke jetted out as the edges of the composite sizzled and flamed. Fire alarms went off.

Lawrence gripped the door's handle and kicked down on the burning circle. It flew out, turning over and over like a flipped coin, with the noxious vapor swirling behind it. Several crewmen who were clustered round the other side of the door took flight.

For a second Lawrence could see down the length of the Koribu toward the forward compression drive section. Then all the other emergency pressure doors were closing. Amber strobes came to life and fire sirens wailed along the entire corridor. Crewmen were diving away down radial corridors. He managed to dart three of them before they all vanished. Secondary pressure doors began closing off the radial corridors as he and Denise glided over them.

There was a network node ten meters from the emergency pressure door. Denise used a power blade to slice through the casing and carefully positioned a dragon-extruded communications link on top of the databus unit Microfilaments slid through the electronics inside to merge with the fiberoptic cables. Prime loaded into another section's network.

The audio alarm brought Captain Marquis Krojen instantly awake. The volume was like the scream of explosive decompression. He sat up fast, the strap around his waist preventing him from soaring completely off the bunk in the low gravity. For a moment he looked around in confusion as his cabin lights came on. Starships had different alarm sounds for every conceivable type of emergency. After so many decades flying them, Marquis could have sworn he knew every one by heart. But this time he actually had to wait for his DNI to scroll the information.

"Intruder alert?" He simply couldn't believe the neat indigo symbols.

The alarm fell silent.

"Yes, sir," the ship's AS confirmed.

"Jesus Christ, this has got to be a drill." Something dreamed up by that bastard Roderick after all the trouble at the Durrell Spaceport. It couldn't be real.

"No, sir," the AS insisted. "I have been erased from the maintenance bay hangar section network. Firewalls are in place and holding against the subversion software."

Marquis tore at the Velcro on his waist strap. He went through his main cabin into the bridge, moving fast in the one-eighth gravity. Colin Jeffries, the executive officer, was in the command chair, looking thoroughly shocked. Only three other bridge consoles were manned.

"What the hell happened?" Marquis Krojen made an effort to calm down. "Give me a situation review."

"A Xianti reported a hydraulics failure," Colin Jeffries said. "We docked it in the maintenance bay, and the next thing we know the whole surrounding network had been subverted."

"What's our response?" Marquis sat in one of the unused console seats. The ship's AS activated the panes, showing a range of schematics and camera images.

"Standard response is to withdraw power and environmental support from the contaminated section," the AS said. "That has been done."

"Can you get me a real-time visual image of the space-plane?"

"No."

"Divert an engineering shuttle to the maintenance bay, now," Marquis told Colin Jeffries. "I want to see what's happening."

"Aye, sir."

"Durrell Spaceport security is online," the AS reported. "They are warning us about the spaceplane. They believe it has been taken over by a Thallspring resistance movement."

Marquis Krojen refused to let the shocking information panic him into hasty action. The AS had brought up a physical threat procedure on one of the panes. If there was a valid bomb threat against the Koribu, the captain was to order all hands to abandon ship. Security determined that any resistance group that had gotten within striking range would have a bomb capable of destroying the entire starship.

But it hadn't gone off yet. And if they were going to nuke the Koribu, why were they busy trying to subvert it?

"Could our engineering shuttles just rip the Xianti out of there?" Marquis Krojen asked.

Colin Jeffries shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think so. Those shuttles don't have much thrust, and the hold-down latches are designed with a lot more inertia than a loaded Xianti in mind. You'd have to get underneath it and cut through them."

"Work on it. I need options."

"Aye, sir."

"Do we have any contact with any crewmen in the affected section?" Marquis asked the AS. He just couldn't bring himself to say "contaminated."

"No, sir," the AS said. "There are no internal communication links open."

"Very well, I want someone physically looking through the viewport in the emergency pressure door. Give them an open link to the bridge."

"Yes, sir."

"Overflight coming up," Colin Jeffries called.

The AS routed the engineering shuttle's sensor imagery to the panes on Marquis Krojen's console. He looked down on the big pearl-white delta shape, not quite knowing what to expect. It appeared ridiculously impassive. Then his mind ran through docking procedures.

"Did we activate the airlock tunnel?" he asked.

"No, sir," the AS replied. "It was connected after the subversion occurred."

Marquis Krojen looked directly at Colin Jeffries. "They're inside, then. Jesus! Does Durrell Spaceport security actually know what's in there?"

An excited voice burst out of a console speaker. "Sir, I can see somebody moving into the axial corridor."

"Who is this?" Marquis Krojen asked.

"Irwin Watson, sir, fusion engineer."

"Okay, who can you see, Watson?"

"Sir, it's a Skin."

A Skin? Marquis mouthed at Colin Jeffries. The executive officer shrugged.

"What's he doing?" Marquis asked. One of the console panes showed him Watson and several others clustered around the axial corridor's pressure door.

"Sir, he's killing people, shooting them!" Watson's voice had risen to near hysteria.

"What sort of weapon is he using?"

"I don't know. He's got some kind of pistol, but I didn't see it fire. Hey, there's another person through there with him. They're wearing some kind of spacesuit, I think. He's putting something on the door."

"Get back, now," Marquis ordered.

"I can't see what it is."

The camera showed Watson pressing his face against the pressure door viewport.

"Get away from the door. That is an order."

Watson moved back reluctantly, gripping the rungs along the axial corridor. A brilliant white light stabbed out from the pressure door. It vanished as dirty black smoke poured out; streamers churned along the corridor walls like a fast-moving oil slick. A disk of flaming composite suddenly tumbled out of the smoke, narrowly missing Watson.

"Secure that section," Marquis Krojen ordered the AS. "I want physical isolation."

"Affirmative," the AS replied. "Closing emergency pressure doors along the axial corridor."

"Captain." Simon Roderick's face had appeared on one of the console panes. Just his face, against a neutral gray background.

"What have you let up here?" Marquis demanded. He didn't care about etiquette now. His ship was suffering.

"We believe there is an alien on board the spaceplane," Simon Roderick said.

"What?"

"An alien," Roderick said imperturbably. "It has human allies who will probably try to hijack the Koribu."

"Over my dead body." Marquis watched a camera image of the axial corridor. The Skin and his spacesuited companion were through the emergency pressure door. They stopped where there was some kind of access panel on the corridor wall, and the spacesuited figure took out a power blade.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Roderick said.

"The intruders have exposed a network node," the AS said. "Subversion software is loading directly into the local neurotonic pearls. It is reconfiguring their processing patterns."

"Stop it," Marquis said.

"I am unable to comply. Network data management routines have been corrupted. Firewalls established. Power and environmental support withdrawn."

"Holy Jesus." Marquis studied the starship's primary schematic. They'd lost all contact with the rear third of the Koribu, which now lay beyond the firewalls and closed emergency pressure doors. "What can this alien do?"

"I'm not sure," Roderick replied. "But it has technology well in advance of ours. You might not be able to stop them."

"Break out the weapons," Marquis ordered. "I want our crewmen armed and authorized to shoot."

"We've got ten carbines and some dart pistols," Colin Jeffries said. "They'll just bounce off Skin."

"But maybe not the other one."

"I am detecting venting from the isolated cargo sections," the AS reported.

"Venting what?" an aghast Marquis asked. The panes shifted to views from external cameras. Huge plumes of glittering silver vapor were fountaining out of the starship's rear sections.

"Spectrographic analysis indicates it is our atmosphere," the AS said.

The doctor refused to cooperate at first. Simon didn't actually threaten him, but he came close before the man's more basic survival instinct cut in.

"I really don't recommend this," the doctor said. He was helping two orderlies push Simon's trolley and three cabinets of intensive-care support equipment through the spaceport terminal building. "You're not stable enough for something as traumatic as a spaceplane flight yet. Please reconsider."

"No," Simon grunted. He could hear his Skin escort shouting at people to get out of the way. Protests and hurried scraping sounds. Trivial background details he ignored.

An optronic membrane was covering his remaining eye, showing him camera images from the Koribu and the space-planes around it. Gas was still venting from the fat barrel of its cargo section. There must have been twenty of the plumes, emerging from hatches and valves distributed among the silos. His communication link to the starship buzzed with confused, shouted orders and queries. Crewmen were struggling into spacesuits, collecting weapons from the executive officer. As countermeasures went, it was truly pitiful.

The starship's AS was completely ineffectual against the alien's Prime program. If Newton and the other (presumably an enhanced villager) kept going along the axial corridor and physically loaded it into every section, they would soon have complete control. His personal AS now considered this was their most likely strategy. The most uncomplicated and efficient way of hijacking a starship, with a frighteningly high projected success level.

Simon saw a small silver sphere fly out from the cargo section.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Lifeboat," Marquis Krojen said. "There's very little air left back there. My crew is having to abandon the contaminated area."

Simon's trolley wheels bumped over a small ridge on the floor. He moaned at the sharp flare of pain that the jolt inflicted.

"Sorry," the doctor said. He didn't sound it "Can the engineering shuttles close down the venting?" Simon asked.

"Some of them, possibly. But there's not enough time."

Several of the plumes were shrinking, becoming less energetic.

The trolley was pushed into an elevator. Simon's magnetic sense showed him almost a dozen people clustered around him as the doors slid shut.

"Damn," Marquis Krojen exclaimed. "They just blew another pressure door. That puts them above the first life support wheel."

"Where are your people?" Simon demanded.

"I'm putting a squad together. We're not trained for this, not fighting a Skin."

"Learn fast." Simon saw another two lifeboats shoot away from the Koribu's cargo section.

"The subversion software's loading," Marquis Krojen said. "We're losing another section."

"Can they take over the life support wheel?"

"Not directly. The AS inside will firewall the wheel. But controlling the axial corridor gives them the power and environment feeds to the wheel."

The elevator halted and the doors opened. Simon's trolley was wheeled out into the fueling bay's operations center.

The SF9 opened a communication link. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

The orderlies started pushing Simon's trolley across the walkway to the waiting Xianti.

"I'm going up to the Norvelle," Simon told his clone sibling. "I'll assume command of our response operation from there."

"Don't be ridiculous. You're in no condition to assume command of anything."

"I'm here, you're not. It would take you hours to get up into orbit. That could well be too late."

"We're already too late for you to achieve anything up there. It's all down to Captain Krojen now."

"Which makes it even more important that I reach orbit as soon as possible. The Koribu is a disaster area. The captain has all but lost his ship to the alien." He cried out again as the trolley was lifted through the airlock. "It cannot get away from us," he gasped. "I won't allow it. We must have that technology. If they go FTL, I'll follow. I will bring it back for us. The whole world will be elevated."

"It will not. Wait while I try to negotiate a deal with the villagers."

"I know very well what the villagers will do to us."

"That's not—"

Simon cut the link. For good measure he used his codes to authorize Memu Bay's immediate and total isolation from the datapool; then he shut down the satellite links as well. With luck, it should keep his clone sibling out of contact with Z-B for several hours.

Deprived of environmental systems, the axial corridor was thick with smoke, its amber warning strobes casting weird nimbi around the walls. Lawrence's Skin sensors could cut through most of the crud clotting the air. He was keeping alert for crewmen who might appear from radial corridors he thought were clear. So far they hadn't run into any physical opposition at all.

As they moved along the axial corridor, Prime had taken over the surrounding sections one by one, venting the atmosphere out into space, and he hoped, forcing the crew to abandon ship. Sensors had shown eight lifeboats being launched from around the cargo section so far. Internal cameras had pinpointed seven crewmen remaining: three were waiting in a lifeboat, two were inside refuge chambers, while another two had put on spacesuits and were trying to get back into the axial corridor.

"How are you doing?" Lawrence asked the dragon.

"Admirably, thank you. I have established full access and authority to the Koribu's cargo and fusion drive sections. Prime is now installed in all its management electronics. I would have preferred a much larger bandwidth than the spaceplane umbilical provides. This starship does have a remarkable number of components. I cannot operate all of them simultaneously."

"What about our weapons?"

"Yes. I am in charge of several missile launchers, lasers and electron beam cannon. Sensor coverage is not yet complete. The majority are positioned around the forward sections. Targeting information is incomplete at this time."

"But if you see something coming, you'll be able to take a shot at it?"

"I will."

"Okay. You should have access to the forward sections soon."

Denise loaded Prime into a node. "We've got control of this section."

Lawrence studied the schematic that Prime was providing. For the first time, the Koribu's AS hadn't cut the main power grid around them. It was supplying the life support wheels.

The secondary pressure doors at the top of each wheel had been shut. Prime's control of systems extended only down to the giant magnetic bearings that were wrapped around the central stress structure. Data access to the wheels themselves had been firewalled.

"You keep going," Lawrence told Denise. "Establish a datalink to the compression drive. I'll deal with the crew."

He ordered Prime to halt the rotation of the life support wheels. The axial corridor began to creak loudly as the bearings changed their magnetic fields to act as a brake on the momentum of the tremendous wheels. The wall juddered and vibrated as the stress structure tried to absorb the extraordinary torque forces leaking through the bearings. In theory, the life support wheels counterbalanced each other. It was fine when they were running smoothly, but there was enough inertia wound up in each one to wrench the starship apart if the forces weren't perfectly matched. Now the stress structure was taking the full brunt of minute errors in the braking procedure.

Prime opened the pressure door on one of the radial corridors, and Lawrence dropped through into the rotating transfer toroid. He placed an energy focus ribbon on the top of the next pressure door and burned through into the life support wheel.

Captain Marquis Krojen instinctively grabbed at his console as a shudder ran through the bridge. The invaders must be braking the life support wheels. He didn't want to think what that would be doing to the central stress structure.

"Can we use our reserve power to maintain the bearings?" he asked the AS.

"No, sir."

Every question, every countermove he came up with received that same bland answer.

"They're in wheel one," Colin Jeffries reported. "We just lost contact."

Captain Marquis Krojen clenched his teeth to stop himself swearing. The bridge crew had been using secondary transmitters to provide communications between the wheels and the spaceplanes outside. Now the schematic showed wheel one as a black outline.

Another shudder rocked the bridge. This time it was accompanied by a metallic creaking sound. He couldn't wait any longer. "Okay, get our squad up into the axial corridor."

"Aye, sir," Colin Jeffries acknowledged grimly. He issued the order.

The squad consisted of bridge officers who'd drawn the carbines and found themselves a few laser welding tools. According to the AS, none of them stood a chance of damaging a Skin. The idea was to use the firefight to lure the Skin into a hub compartment that they'd wired into the reserve power supply. The voltage they could push through him might be sufficient to disable the Skin suit, or possibly even kill the man inside.

If the Skin chased them.

If they didn't all get killed in the first few seconds.

"Wheel one is venting," Colin Jeffries called. "That software has blown the escape hatches and used the fire dump nozzles."

A pane showed Marquis Krojen the life support wheel with precious air gushing out of its rim to spew across the stars.

"Spacesuits, everybody," the captain ordered bitterly. "You have my authority to abandon ship if your life support wheel loses pressure." He began to pull his own suit on, a task made difficult by the falling gravity. Optronic membranes showed him the squad opening a pressure door up into the rotating transfer toroid.

"Moving through," the lieutenant commanding the squad reported. "Nothing in the transfer toroid. Opening radial corridor pressure door."

Gravity on the bridge had almost vanished. At least that meant the shaking had stopped. Marquis Krojen used a Velcro patch to secure his helmet on the console next to him, keeping it within reach. "Isn't it locked?"

"No, sir. Going through. A lot of smoke in here. Can't see much."

"Pull back," Marquis said. "He knows you're there, his software will be tracking you."

"I can see someone." The muffled sound of carbine fire came out of the speaker.

"Pull back."

"Yes, sir." The telemetry display from the squad began to waver. "Suit... can't... Malfunction."

"They're firing!" another squad member cried. "Down."

"Back!"

"There!"

"Shot. Shot me. Oh fuck, I'm hit."

The lieutenant screamed.

"Can't breathe."

All the squad telemetry vanished. "Subversion alert," the AS said.

"In here?" Marquis asked hurriedly.

"An attempt was made through the communications link," the AS said. "I have disengaged the life support wheel's internal nodes from the network."

"So we've lost contact with the squad?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many casualties?"

"I am uncertain. Their spacesuit electronics were being subverted. Telemetry after they entered the transfer toroid is unreliable."

Marquis was looking at the camera image showing him the open pressure door. Black smoke was oozing through it, hazing the compartment. He could see the fire alarm strobes flashing brightly. "Have any of them made it back into the wheel?"

"No, sir."

"Communication with wheel two lost," Colin reported.

"Turn off your spacesuit communications," Marquis ordered. "Don't let it get inside." He glanced at the camera pictures. Vigorous geysers of atmosphere were spraying out of wheel two. It was like watching a friend bleed to death.

Weary sadness replaced the anger that had carried him this far.

"Abandon ship."

"Sir?" Colin Jeffries said.

The remaining bridge crew were staring at him.

"There's nothing else we can do. And I'm not leaving any of my people hostage to these bastards. Use the lifeboats, get clear. The spaceplanes will pick you up."

"What about you?"

"The captain stays with his ship. You know that!"

"Then I'm staying as well."

"Colin, please—" Pane displays began to fracture into random chunks of color, then went dead. The steady background whine of the environmental fans faded away. All the lights went off. Marquis snatched up the helmet and jammed it down on his collar. Shaking fingers engaged the seal. He gripped the arms on his chair just as the air turned into a howling hurricane. Paper, plastic cups, food trays, electronics, foaming water and even clothing streamed past him, caught in stop-motion flight by the blazing scarlet strobe light that was intent on warning the bridge of a decompression. A T-shirt wrapped itself around his helmet, flapping furiously. He didn't dare let go of the chair to push it off. The wild torrent would have carried him with it. He tried rocking from side to side, and eventually the fabric slipped away.

Air was pouring through an open hatchway. He could actually see moisture vapor scoring thin contrails, marking out the flow. Any unsecured item had been sucked through. When he pictured the wheel's layout he remembered there was an escape hatch three compartments along. The subversion software must have fired the explosive bolts.

It took several minutes for all the atmosphere to clear. When the gusts and roaring had shrunk away, the red decompression strobe was still flashing. It had been joined by green strobes that had come on around the lifeboat hatch that had opened in the floor. With his communication circuit off, Marquis could hear nothing. He switched on his spacesuit helmet light, then pushed out of his chair. Colin and the other crew were doing the same. He beckoned Colin over, and they touched helmets.

"Take the lifeboat," Marquis shouted. "Get these people out."

"You must come with us." Colin's voice was like a muffled buzzing.

"No. I ordered the squad to intercept that Skin. I'm going to find out what happened to them. They're my responsibility."

"Good luck, sir."

The first of the bridge crew glided into the lifeboat. Marquis Krojen left the bridge. Normally the life support wheel seemed cramped and confined; in freefall it was a lot larger. Red, amber and green strobes flashed around him as he slid through the empty, airless corridors. He passed three lifeboat hatches that were shut. Blue indicator lights showed that the little craft had ejected safely.

It killed him to see his magnificent starship in this state. Environmental ducts had ruptured during the decompression, shattering dozens of plastic panels. Thick blue-green coolant fluid dribbled out of torn tubes, creating small constellations of globules that fizzed energetically as they evaporated in the vacuum. Loose debris that hadn't been sucked out formed its own baleful nebula in each compartment and cabin. It was mainly composed of clothes and crumpled food trays, though there were also cushions, fragments of plastic paneling, chairs, mashed-up pot plants, even a pedal frame from one of the gyms. Now that the air had gone it floated idly, drifting out of open hatchways to clutter the corridor. He glided around the obstacles or flicked them aside. Water was boiling furiously out of a split pipe, filling a long section of the corridor with thick white mist.

Even if they did recover the ship, he knew Z-B would never spend the money it would require for a complete refit. His Koribu was doomed, one way or another.

The spoke lift shaft that led up to the wheel's hub was almost clear, allowing him to move a lot faster. When he reached the first hub compartment the pressure door hinged shut behind him. The strobes went off, and the normal lighting returned. Several of the panels flickered, betraying just how much damage had been wrought by the decompression; internal systems were designed to operate in a vacuum. Refusing to be intimidated by the subversion software's activity, he moved into the hub's annular corridor and continued toward the transfer toroid.

The pressure door was closed. He pushed against it, knowing how futile that gesture was. Dense white gas suddenly burst out of an environment duct grille with a silent rush.

"Jesus," he muttered inside the helmet. The software must be preparing the wheel for the invaders. He flipped around quickly and kicked off. There was one hub compartment that was safer for him than the others. He zipped back along the annular corridor. Every grille was blowing out a column of air. The booby-trapped compartment was directly ahead. Pressure was already back up to half a standard atmosphere.

"Careful. It could be dangerous in there."

Marquis gripped the hatch rim to halt his flight and slowly looked round. The Skin was floating lazily along the annular corridor behind him.

"Somebody wired up the whole place to the backup power supply," the Skin said; his voice was tinny in the thin air.

Marquis turned his communication circuit back on. "It was wired up on my orders."

"A reasonable idea for a noncombatant."

"What do you want?"

"What I have, Captain: your starship."

"Why? At least tell me that."

"We're taking it on a trip."

"I doubt it. You've succeeded in virtually wrecking it."

"This is just superficial damage to the life support sections. The drives are intact. That's all we need."

"Where are you going?"

"To the alien's home star. You're welcome to come with us if you like. You've spent your life in space. I suspect you haven't entirely lost your fascination with the unknown, even if it's been diverted by Zantiu-Braun."

The offer did cause Marquis Krojen to hesitate, but duty was a lot stronger than old dreams. "My only concern right now is for the safety of my crew. Did you kill the squad I sent up here?"

"A blunt question, Captain. But, no, they're not dead, although a couple of them are injured. We subverted their spacesuits and turned off the air. They had to take their helmets off. I darted them."

"I see."

"Well, there's gratitude. Ah. Here we go."

The lights dimmed again. Marquis realized something was diverting power from the tokamaks. "The compression drive," he said in surprise.

"I did say it was intact. We'll be using it as soon as the alien can raise the tokamaks up to full power and bring the energy inverter online. In the meantime, I want you to help me shove the remaining crewmen into lifeboats. If we don't, then they'll be coming with us, and this ship is not going to come back."

* * *

Simon had blacked out when the scramjet came on. Acceleration had heightened the pain to an unbelievable agony before his body's beleaguered natural defenses snatched him away. When he recovered he was in freefall, with the intensive-care equipment emitting urgent bleeping sounds. Indigo symbols and script slowly crept into focus. There was no data available from the Koribu. He told his AS to give him the orbital tactical plots, and the sensor readings from the star-ships and satellites. "Good God." It was every bit as bad as he expected.

"Please, don't try to move," the doctor said quickly. "You're all right."

"I'd better be," Simon snapped at him. The crisp circles of the tactical plot showed him forty-eight lifeboats were slowly receding from the Koribu. The Xiantis had rendezvoused with a few, but they didn't have the cabin space to accommodate all the crewmen sheltering inside. Two of the spaceplanes had simply loaded the lifeboats into their cargo bays and de-orbited, carrying them down to Durrell. The remainder of the lifeboats were waiting for instructions: should they remain in orbit for rendezvous and rescue, or should they fire their retro rockets and land on the planet—if so, at what location? Simon couldn't care less. He reduced the tactical display back into the main display grid and expanded the Koribu's sensor scans. Vast and powerful magnetic flux lines were expanding out from the compression drive section as the tokamaks powered up. The starship was preparing to go FTL.

He told his AS to establish a link to Sebastian Manet, the Norvelle's captain.

"Can you disable the Koribu?" Simon asked. According to his tactical plot, the starships were only eight thousand kilometers apart.

"We should be able to saturate its defenses between the six of us," Sebastian Manet said. "I would like to wait until it's farther away from the lifeboats and spaceplanes. They could be damaged by the defense missiles, or the Koribu's detonation."

"I don't want it detonated. I want it disabled."

"We don't have that kind of capability."

"Why can't you use the kinetic weapons? Target the compression drive section."

"The Koribu will simply use its nukes against them: nothing can get through that kind of defensive bombardment."

"We must have more kinetic missiles than they have nuclear explosives."

"We do. But Captain Krojen was in the last lifeboat to escape. He's confirmed the goal of the hijackers. They're about five minutes away from going FTL. We'd need to fire at least eighteen salvos to soak up their defensive capability and be certain of achieving a hit; that would take forty-five minutes to an hour. We won't even be able to get the first salvo to them in time."

"Use the gamma soak on them."

"That projector takes about fifteen minutes to deploy."

Simon let out an infuriated grunt.

"Please," the doctor implored. "You must remain calm. I'll have to sedate you otherwise."

"You even come close to me again and I'll have you thrown out of the airlock," Simon told him. "Track it," he ordered Sebastian Manet. "I want to know where they're going. And begin the power-up sequence for Norvelle's compression drive."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. I'll dock with you in another seventeen minutes. As soon as I'm on board, we're following them."

* * *

Simon had gone to sit in the helicopter's cabin to receive the rush of data that his personal AS had profiled for him. Information on the Koribu hijack attempt was sparse, but sensor data from the starship showed him the intruders progressing down the axial corridor, loading Prime as they went. Atmosphere began venting from the cargo section. Lifeboats ejected.

And there was nothing he could do about it His only option was to order one of the other starships to open fire with nuclear weapons. Not only would that wipe out the entire crew and obliterate a multitrillion-dollar starship along with the nearby spaceplanes, it would also kill the alien. Nothing would be gained, and everything would be lost. Besides, he wasn't entirely sure the other captains would obey such an order.

A change-of-status icon blinked up within the DNI's display grid. His personal AS always kept him updated on security matters concerning his clone siblings no matter what crisis he was dealing with. He expanded the icon and read the script that came scrolling out with a growing sense of dismay.

"What do you think you're doing?' he asked the SK2.

The response and short argument that ensued completely validated his consternation. There were precedents for settling arguments among Roderick clone siblings, but he didn't know of any situation when one of them had been acting in such an unstable manner. In his current state the SK2 probably wouldn't accept any kind of ruling that restricted his authority.

Then the question became irrelevant when the SK2 cut the link. "Damn him!" Annoyance turned to fury when his personal AS told him that Memu Bay had been isolated from the global datapool. A second later the AV88's communication circuit lost the satellite link. Simon tried to re-establish contact through the other helicopters parked on Arnoon's central meadow. There was no response from the satellite. He used his bracelet pearl. It could detect the satellite's beacon, but there was no contact.

Not only had the SK2 commandeered the mission, he'd also isolated a clone sibling in a hostile area. That invalidated his authority entirely. Simon shook his head wearily. Assuming my Board brothers ever find out. Legitimacy and political maneuvering weren't exactly his primary concern right now.

Jacintha was sitting at a long wooden table inside the snowbark pavilion. She looked completely relaxed as three Skins stood guard a discreet distance away.

"You have a magnetic sense, and you're a clone," she said as Simon walked up to her. "How fascinating. Life on Earth is obviously a little more complex than we thought."

He indicated the bench on the other side of the table. "May I?"

"Please."

"Did you hear all that?"

"Loud and clear, thank you."

"Whatever viewpoint you have, the outcome is not good. My clone sibling is ... unwell."

"I think crazy is the word I'd use."

"He's traumatized, and still in a considerable amount of pain, which is affecting his judgment. He was inside Josep's blast radius."

"Is that supposed to make me feel guilty?"

"I'm illustrating cause and effect."

"You invaded our planet. This is the result."

"I refuse to shoulder the entire blame. Your actions have consequences, too. Neither of us has emerged from this confrontation with much credit."

"No," Jacintha admitted with reluctance. "But we do have a starship. And the alien will be returned home."

"I hope that its society is well armed. My clone sibling will not stop until he has obtained their nanonic technology."

"The dragons don't need armaments. And any threats he makes against them will be completely ineffectual."

"Dragons?" Simon recalled the elaborate carvings he'd glimpsed on the A-frames.

"Our name for them," she said.

"I see. Well, just knowing where these dragons live will give him a dangerous victory. If he doesn't obtain nanonics on this flight, he will return there. Are you so certain that humans will never obtain the information? If not by force, then by trade or diplomacy. After all, the dragon allowed you to have it." He could see the uncertainty creep into her mind. "If that possibility exists, you have to help me."

"Help you do what?"

"Help me to ensure it isn't my clone sibling who acquires it first."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I believe that nanonic systems should be introduced to the human race, but only on an equal-access basis. That's one of the main reasons we've been so cautious. If you or your clone snatches it first, it would be misapplied. You know it would."

"Anything that is used in a way you don't personally agree with is by definition misapplied. That's why human culture evolved the way it did, so that the majority can influence future development. Everyone has a voice—a small one, admittedly, but a voice nonetheless. Or do you mistrust the entire human race?"

"Please don't try to twist this. You personally, Zantiu-Braun as a whole, would misapply the technology. You would treat it as a monopoly to increase your own wealth and influence, and very likely your military strength as well."

"Of course we'll apply it to our advantage. But you don't know what our goals are. I should say my goals, for I in all my hundreds of individual selves am the one who originally formulated our policy and ensure that it's carried out."

"All right, I'm curious, what goals? To invade and conquer more planets?"

"No. Asset realization is not sustainable in the long term, or even the medium term. Today's starflights are the ignominious end to a noble dream that is slowly winding down to its natural conclusion."

"The noble idea being?"

"Giving you what you have. A clean start on a fresh world. It's a desire that's hardwired into many humans. It comes from our impetuosity and curiosity, the wanderlust gene. But it also has roots in the dissatisfaction with the society in which we live. How much easier it is to move and start anew than to rectify the institutional, even constitutional, mistakes of a monolithic social system. Between them, those motivators were enough to launch the first wave of colonies. It was always going to be financially nonviable; the compression drive technology just isn't capable of supporting the dream. But still we went ahead. There are a lot of successes, worlds like Ducain, Amethi and Larone: all independent and prosperous stakeholder democracies. We even have a host of semisuccesses like Thallspring, in debt on Earth but fully self-sustaining. Personally, I actually rate Santa Chico a considerable success—albeit in its own unique fashion."

"If we're a success, then stop holding us back. Let us develop freely. Use that power and influence you have to stop the asset-realization missions."

"I know our invasion dominates your thinking, and I'm sorry. But the necessary changes have to be made at a more fundamental level. We have to elevate the whole human race in order to be free of the restrictions they impose."

"Elevate them?"

"Yes. Earth with its seven billion population is the wealthiest human world. After all, with that many people working in an industrial society, it couldn't be anything else. But it also has the greatest level of poverty. There are some city districts where the inhabitants are in their twentieth generation of penury. They simply never get out, unlike your ancestors, who were smart and determined enough to get here. Schools and the datapool offer huge opportunities to learn, to enable them to work their way out of the slums and integrate themselves with the primary economy. And they never do. For every one that gets out, ten stay behind and have families, usually large ones. Drug addiction is rife, crime impoverishes them further; they suffer bad housing, bad parenting, bad social care, decaying infrastructure, casual violence. It just goes on and on."

"I do understand the principles of the poverty cycle."

"You should; it's beginning to happen here. I've seen the secondary economy starting to creep in. You have an emergent underclass. At the moment they're only slightly adrift from mainstream life on Thallspring. Soon, in another few generations, the divide will be unbridgeable. Thallspring will be a replica of Earth."

"No, it won't."

"Ah." He smiled. "Yes. You believe the dragon technology will help bring your world together and allow you to build something new and decent."

"Yes," Jacintha said. "If it's introduced gently, the kind of changes we envisage will be massively beneficial."

"How remarkable. And enviable. With that kind of outlook I could offer you a seat on our Board. I—we—also want to see societal change, not further pointless expansion that forever repeats past mistakes. But for that change to be total, it has to come from the heart of human society: Earth. We've been attempting that for over a century now. The poor, the underclass, have got to be eliminated. And I'm not speaking from pure altruism. I'm actually being quite selfish. They prey on our compassion; they absorb billions in welfare payments simply so they can eat and be housed; they use up still more billions in medical care, for inevitably they are the sector of society that is the most disease-prone and in general bad health. It is they who cause today's dreams and visions to fail. If we didn't have them to take care of, our starships would still be venturing out farther into the galaxy and founding colonies. We would have the time and resources to explore new forms of living. All of us, not just you and Santa Chico."

"You speak of the poor as if they're subhuman."

"It depends what you mean by human."

"I'm not sure you are."

"Oh, but I am, because I care. We've devoted Z-B to converting whole communities to a rational economic pattern through stakeholding. The Regressors and deglobalizers sneer at the whole concept, naturally; they call it corporate dictatorship. But governments and local politicians are desperate for us to develop their impoverished regions and revitalize them. Even our corporate rivals have followed our initiative. Between us we've reintroduced the concept of jobs for life that had almost been wiped out in the twenty-first century when technological evolution and innovation was so fast-paced that it was delivering machines and products that were obsolete before they even reached the marketplace. Today, we have a slower technological evolution, and economic instabilities have been reduced accordingly. The wealth we bring with our investment means our stakeholders can afford almost every benefit that modern civilization is capable of providing. And the one thing we always provide, no matter how small your stake, is full family healthcare. Germline v-writing is available to everybody."

"What kind of v-writing?" Jacintha asked. She made no attempt to hide her concern at the concept.

"Whatever the parents want," Simon said. "Invariably, the kind of children born into all this middle-class affluence tend to be stronger and healthier, and to live longer. They're also smarter. Again, a natural desire for your child to succeed and be happy: preload the dice to give it the best possible chance in life."

"That's your goal? Increase the average IQ of the human racer'

"Yes. Essentially, we're breeding the underclass into extinction. Once we get into one of these poverty zones the first thing we do is give it improved healthcare. After that, the next generation does finally take proper advantage of universal schooling; they can see that there's a world outside the ghetto that's worth taking part in. From that they progress to earning a living, they contribute to the whole rather than detract. Right now there are fewer welfare dependents, manual laborers, petty criminals and social outcasts than there have been for two hundred years. Fewer people the state has to care for. Fewer people who drain the vitality out of the human spirit.

"If we can finally instigate global stakeholding it'll mean an end to poverty, the end of visionaries being restrained by mundanes. Companies like Zantiu-Braun will be able to begin programs of real expansion. We can build a whole new era of interstellar commonwealth, where ideas and concepts are traded between stars."

"That all sounds very... I don't know. Fascist?"

"We don't impose any of this. There's no gun to the head. We simply provide a choice and let human nature do the rest. Besides, you used nanonic systems to enhance yourself. I suspect you have germline v-writing in your ancestry as well."

"I don't deny it. But that doesn't qualify you for my help in this situation."

"It ought to. Despite all my clone siblings and I have done, entire nations are still mired in their old ways. Even our most optimistic estimates had put global stakeholding another three or four generations away.

"Now you've discovered an alien with the potential to bring about stakeholding's consummation in a few short years. All the wasters and the ignorant I hold in contempt, and my clone sibling so despises, could be elevated in one clean sweep, made a gift of the intelligence they so profoundly lack. If you thought what we've done to Thallspring was an invasion, what would you call that? You said you planned to spread the dragon's knowledge gently, so people would have time to understand it and assimilate it. Suppose you didn't? Suppose you had a vision that required implementation rather than free choice? And you had the means to enforce that implementation?"

"You can't force an entire population to enhance themselves," she said, mortified.

"I know that. But my clone sibling is more driven than I. Less forgiving. As far as he's concerned, if you have the means, why wait? A working nanonic system will give him that means. And if he follows the Koribu he will have absolute exclusivity. So you tell me, how big a threat does he pose to the human race? Is it possible to modify a grown adult human for higher IQ?"

"Yes. Neural cells are essentially no different from any other. The patternform sequencer molecules can restructure them."

"Then you now have a choice. The dragon's nanonic technology will be introduced to Earth at some time. Do you want him to be the one who delivers it, or me?"

She gave a bitter, brittle laugh. "What's the difference?"

"Look at me," he said. When she stared directly at him, he said, "I am the moderate voice. I will not force it on people. I will not allow it to be forced on people. It will be subject to a democratic process, whether stakeholding or classical. But whatever the outcome, change will come; that is always the consequence of new knowledge. How it comes is now up to you. Today you and I are opponents because of circumstance. Do not let that color your judgment of me."

"What, exactly, are you asking for?"

"I want to know where they are both going, where the dragon's homeworld is. I want Prime to break through this communications block so I can divert a spaceplane to Memu Bay airport and take me directly up to a starship. I have to go after them. I have to prevent my clone sibling from being the one who acquires this knowledge."

* * *

Lawrence and Denise spent most of the first week working on repairs and removing junk, aided by a small squadron of Prime-managed robots. Life support wheels one and two were slowly spun up again, providing the Koribu with a balanced precession. One, they ignored completely. Two, they attempted to repressurize. It took them three days just to secure pressure bulkheads. Open doors had been badly damaged by the explosive decompression. Hinges had twisted. Rim seals were ruptured. Debris clogged the rails. Power and data conduits had been shredded by flying fragments. Each of the doors had to be examined for damage and somehow secured in place. The escape hatches that had been blown into space were patched with metal or composite sheets epoxied into place. Eventually, their little habitable domain expanded to cover a quarter of the wheel, with the bridge in the center. One spoke was also pressurized, allowing them up to the hub without needing to suit up. Not that they used the axial corridor much. If anything did malfunction in the compression drive, it would be the robots that performed the repair.

With the pressure restored, they repaired the air filtration and scrubber units, replaced fan motors, cleaned out the heat exchanger and mended pipes. Replenishing the oxygen and nitrogen was no problem. The Koribu's reserve tanks could resupply enough atmosphere to support twenty thousand people for two months. Now they just had to sustain two people for 104 days. Water was equally abundant So much so they never even considered fixing the recycler and purifier mechanism.

Koribu's food stock was made up entirely of sterile meal-packs, food that was produced entirely devoid of bacteria to prevent it from decaying. They had enough to last a thousand years. Denise hated it. "There's no taste," she complained the first day. They were back in the spaceplane, taking a break while the robots finished welding and insulating cryogenic pipes along the spoke.

Lawrence checked her pack. She'd chosen Chateaubriand steak with bearnaise sauce. The hydration valve was preset, so she couldn't have used the wrong amount of water to saturate it before she put it in the microwave slot. "It'll just be freefall pooling," he told her. "Fluid buildup in your head plays hell with your taste receptors. Try squirting some more salt solution into it."

"It's not just the taste, it's the texture, too." She pulled an array of mealpacks out of a box, sending them whirling across the little cabin to bounce off the walls. "Look at these. Each one a different food, and all with exactly the same consistency. It's like lukewarm mashed potato in twenty colors."

"Right. Sorry about that." Only another 103 days of this to go. When the wheel section was finally repressurized, Lawrence stood in the bridge compartment and cautiously unsealed his Skin. He sniffed at the cool air. "Sweet Fate, no problem with freefall pooling here."

Denise took her face mask off and grimaced. "What did that?"

"Let's go find out."

They never did track the stench down to a single source. Coolant fluid that had frozen was now sloshing about, slowly evaporating. The waste recycler was a big culprit, which they solved by closing the valves and having the robots spray the whole mechanism in foam sealant. Food scraps that the crew were eating had partially boiled in the vacuum before freezing; now they were truly rotten. Lawrence also suspected rodents and insects, decomposing away behind the wall and ceiling paneling.

All of it had to be cleared away: the fluids mopped up, biodegradable items taken through an airlock and dumped in nearby compartments that were still in a vacuum. It kept them busy for a while.

Lawrence claimed the captain's small suite of rooms. He took out every article of Marquis Krojen's clothes, all the personal items, erasing his identity. Then he went through the other cabins in search of clothes that fit. A lot had been sucked out into space, but there were enough to last a couple of months before he had to start thinking about washing them. Denise moved into a cabin on the other side of the bridge.

After the first week Lawrence began reviewing the multimedia library. He didn't have much else to do. Prime and the robots were perfectly capable of maintaining the few pieces of environmental equipment necessary to keep their section of the wheel functional. He had reactivated a sustainer cabinet for his Skin. Not that he expected to wear it again. That kept chugging along quietly without his intervention. The compression drive was operating efficiently, as were its tokamaks. There was no navigation required. No daily inspection of the ship. And no view.

At first he started choosing music to play, racking the volume up loud. It was kind of eerie, two people alone in a ship built for over twenty thousand. The music went partway to filling the emptiness for him while he exercised away in the gym to keep his body in trim. Then he and Denise started arguing about the tracks he played. He refused to let it get out of hand. He'd acquired plenty of experience with grudges building amid small groups in confined quarters; she with her rustic upbringing had no idea about the compromises that had to be made. So after that she chose half of them, and he kept quiet about her taste.

Even spending three or four hours a day working out left him with a lot of time to kill. He went back to the library and began accessing the i's. It was something he hadn't really done since leaving Amethi. At first he went for the comedies, new and classic, but there's only so long you can keep laughing at situations that have no real bearing on your own life. After that he immersed himself in action adventures, finally giving up on them when they became idiotic and repetitive. Dramas were generally too harrowing. He guessed that his current circumstances must have heightened his emotional state, leaving him too susceptible to the melodramatic traumas that characters involved him in. Science fiction he refused point-blank. Despite the huge temptation, that really would be premature. He would see Flight: Horizon again. But not here, and not alone. So he butterflied between classic plays and travelogue documentaries and historical event reenactments. Though more often than not he'd delve into the dragon's scattered memories of the Ring Empire and other strands of galactic history, already old when Earth's dinosaurs were young.

Even though they kept to themselves during the day, he and Denise made a point of spending mealtimes together. They varied the food as much as possible, although Denise never let up bitching about its blandness.

"You really do love her, don't you?" she asked during one dinner, about five weeks into the voyage.

Lawrence gave her a slightly guilty glance. As usual he'd tuned out her moaning about the state of the duck a la orange. When he followed her gaze, he saw he was rubbing the pendant between his thumb and forefinger. The little hologram smiled at him below her foggy age-worn surface.

"Yeah," he said. It didn't hurt to say it to her, not now that there was no turning back. "I do."

"Lucky girl. How long ago was it, twenty years?"

"Just about." He gave the pendant another look, then dropped it back inside his sweatshirt "You know, I only kept it at first to remind me why I left home, so my anger wouldn't fade. That's sort of shifted over the years. I keep it now because of what she represented. The happiest days of my life. It took a long time to realize that nobody can have that effect on your life without meaning something to you. And nobody else has ever meant that much to me, not even close."

Denise gave him a fond smile, slightly surprised by the admission. "I hope you manage to patch things up."

"I was so angry when I found out. Angry with everybody else for being part of a universe where such things were allowed to happen. Which was the only way I had of expressing myself. It was such a shock to discover that someone you love has been used like that. But then we were both young and stupid, me and her. She was desperate to emigrate, and that was the only way she could make it happen. And you know what? There's no difference between what she did and what I did. Zantiu-Braun had my body for twenty years because that's the only way I could ever hope to realize my dream."

"You really are hung up on starflight, aren't you?"

"Absolutely. I was born on a colony. I owe my existence to wanderlust."

"That's so old-human. Just pressing onward for your own satisfaction and never seeing the consequences. I think Simon Roderick may have had a point."

"You are kidding." Jacintha had transmitted her entire conversation with Roderick up to the Koribu before they went FTL. Hearing Z-B's policy hadn't shocked him quite as much as it should have, or at least as much as it would have a month previously. After all, he had been extensively v-written himself, and if he had kids, he would want the best for them, just as Roderick said. Being born a part of a movement like this made you more sympathetic to its aims. It would probably look a lot different from the outside. Terrifying, probably. Smarter, richer, more powerful people wanted to alter your children so that they could take part in their level of society, not yours. Lawrence wasn't sure if that was evolution or eugenics.

"No," Denise said. "He was right to say that all we've been doing with colonization is re-creating new Earths for no reason other than personal aggrandizement. They are established as fresh territories for the wealthy so that they're not hemmed in by old problems and restrictions. But those problems and restrictions don't cease to exist back on Earth just because they've left. If anything, they've been exacerbated. Because the type of people who leave are the ones whose energy and determination are exactly what's necessary to solve those problems. It's a political statement; you've given up on the rest of the human race."

"People have always migrated in search of something better. It's a fundamental of human nature. It's even why Roderick's project could ultimately succeed, because we do want the best for our kids. People will always choose improvement for themselves if they ever get that choice; they just disagree with the definition of improvement. That's your politics. Colonization is a form of evolution. Minorities can emigrate to live the way they want without persecution. New ideas can flourish once they've escaped the dead hand of inertia, which is what the unchanging, comfortable masses are. New beginnings allow human culture to move forward."

"Forward to what? Higher levels of consumerism?"

"It doesn't matter that some planets are just repeats of Earth. A few of them aren't, and that's what counts. I've been to Santa Chico. It's not a way of life I would ever choose. But they have. And it's incredibly different, and I respect them for that. The portal colonies, who knows what they're building for themselves. You've found something that could help us flourish to an astonishing degree. And it was found out here among the stars, beyond Earth's shriveled horizon. Finding the dragon was an accident. But coming out here to the unknown where we can find the dragons isn't chance. It's where we want to be, it's where we belong."

"We might flourish with dragon nanonics. On the other hand we could just destroy ourselves. It's such a powerful technology."

"That's been said of many new things we've built. The generation alive when it happens is terrified; then two generations on, nobody can even understand what the fuss was about. I don't have religion to fall back on, I don't even believe much in fate, but when it comes down to the bottom line, I do have confidence in us as a species. We'll absorb this as we've absorbed everything else, and we'll move on to something wonderful. History's on our side."

"Not by much. Don't you see? This will give us the ability to change, not just once, but continually. We won't necessarily even be the species you have all this confidence in."

"I'm not talking solely about human history. I'm talking about the Ring Empire as well. They had this, and look what they achieved. Its cultural beauty is something we should aspire to. That so much diversity existed is a wonderful incentive to what we could reach. The most magnificent society possible covering a quarter of the galaxy and lasting for over a million years."

"And where are they now?" Denise said brokenly.

"All around us. They are the dragons, remember. The greatest example of surviving change there could be. They have grown in harmony with their milieu, the space around red giants, and we'll grow into ours, the Earth-like planet. Maybe one day we'll move on from that and join them. We could even be smart enough to learn from the history of the Ring Empire and see that life can never be static."

"You're a dreamer, Lawrence. You don't deal in practicalities. We have a Roderick chasing us who will warp your ideals, and mine, into something wicked."

"Perhaps that is fate. Perhaps he will enslave half of the human race. He'll never get everyone. He won't get you, will he? You and your genetic package will be free to build another new world clean away on the other side of the galaxy."

She stared at him as if he were the real alien. "And that doesn't bother you?"

"It troubles my inherited sense of morality. But then, who are we to judge what will emerge out of that kind of forced evolution? Why assume it will be evil? You could just wait and see rather than prejudge. After all, he believes he's doing the right thing. And even if he creates the most hideous evil, it'll never last. Evolution will turn again."

"I care because of the suffering it will inflict while it exists."

"Suffering from your point of view. I told you I went to Santa Chico. Someone I met there believes I suffer because I live more than thirty years. Is she right, Denise?"

"We cannot allow him to obtain dragon technology."

"You can't. Oh, don't worry, when the time comes I'll help you man the battle stations and disable the Norvelle if I can. But the outcome, that doesn't bother me. I've spent the last twenty years fighting for someone or other, for a reason that I never knew about nor understood. It hasn't made the slightest difference to the human race. Individuals don't control events; we just like to think we do."

"This is different."

"To you and to him, but not to me. I've fought the only battle that mattered to me, and I won, because I'm here on this starship at this time. And it's taking me to the only place I want to go: home."

A fortnight before they were due to reach Aldebaran, Lawrence started checking over one of the engineering shuttles. If all went well, and the dragons took back their lost, damaged kindred, it would have to be taken out of the Xianti's payload bay and delivered to them. So he maneuvered himself into the tiny cabin and ran through the systems and procedures. Prime and the dragon could probably handle the short flight, but including a human pilot would be helpful in such an unknown and hostile environment. Tanks of hypergolic fuel were purged and refilled. Power cells charged to full capacity. Robot arms tested. When everything was online, they flew a few simulations to familiarize him with the handling characteristics.

"I think I'm as good as I'm going to get," Lawrence said after the third day. They'd already notched up eight hours of simulated flying time. "It can't be that hazardous."

"Our proximity to the photosphere will challenge the shuttle's thermal control systems," the dragon said. "But they will be sufficient for a short flight."

"Are you looking forward to this?"

"I'm not sure I have emotional states that equate to yours."

Lawrence studied the display panes around him as Prime worked methodically through the powerdown list "Do you have any emotional states?"

"My thought processes are not affected by external factors, so it is difficult for me to judge. I certainly don't have the extremes of emotion that you do."

"That's an old AS argument dating right back to the Turing test: knowing and experiencing are two different things. Could you feel anger, or simply mimic it?"

"Anger would serve no purpose to me. Anger to a human reflects many biochemical changes within your metabolism. When you are threatened, fear and anger increase your reflexes and to some degree your strength. It can also eliminate higher thought processes, reducing you to creatures of instinct—a useful survival trait for your more primitive ancestors to evolve. But as I am unlikely to be chased across the savannah by a saber-toothed tiger, I do not need fear or anger."

"What about other needs?"

"I prioritize. If threatened, I divert a proportion of my processing power to produce a method of eliminating the threat The greater the threat, the more problem-solving capacity I will contribute."

"Well, that answers one question. You must be a self-aware entity. Self-preservation is one of life's fundamentals."

"The villagers of Arnoon have a great respect for life. They taught me how precious it is."

"So your priorities and ethics weren't inherited?"

"Again, these concepts are derived from a cultural background. There is little of mine remaining for me to draw upon. But the knowledge I retain of the Ring Empire and subsequent dragon star civilizations seems broadly compatible with general human ethos."

Lawrence began flicking the console switches, manually locking in the powerdown. "And if you're wrong?"

"Right and wrong is dependent on cultural perspective. However, I will be interested in assessing the knowledge I have lost. Once that is regained, I will of course have to evaluate my mental evolution."

"Do you think you'll be able to do that? Humans find it very difficult to change their opinions and beliefs. And we very rarely manage to look at things from a fresh perspective."

"My thoughts may run parallel to yours. My way of processing those thoughts does not. The ability to change is fundamental to what I am, even in this reduced state. Whatever we encounter at Aldebaran, I trust I will be able to adapt to it."

"I hope you will, too."

"Thank you."

Lawrence watched the last schematics vanish from the panes. The shuttle was in full standby mode. He undid the cradle straps and began to wriggle his body toward the hatch. "Do you think the Aldebaran dragons will give Simon Roderick patternform technology?"

"I don't see why not. It is our nature to exchange information. I know this concerns Denise."

"Me as well, though not to the same extent."

"Why?"

"First off, I know where I'm going, and whatever happens at Aldebaran doesn't affect me as directly as it will her. I guess that gives me a certain objectivity that she is denied. And she's prejudged again, found the human race lacking. This genetic package she's brought with her, it's the ultimate in running away and leaving your problems behind you. Ironic, really, considering that's what she believes I've done,"

"It is a noble ambition she is pursuing."

"Of course it is. She can restart Arnoon with those DNA samples, and this time it will be without the rest of Thallspring to worry about. But it depends on the dragons' helping her, giving her the kind of information she doesn't want to share with the Rodericks and Earth. She doesn't trust us."

"How can she? She does not know you. Earth and its colonies are as alien to her as the dragons."

"I used to be like that once. I never gave anybody a second chance. It's a very sad way to live your life."

"Do you believe the dragons should provide patternform technology to humans?"

"Yes, I do. Denise is convinced that because we didn't create it for ourselves we won't be able to handle it properly, that it will be constantly misused. To me it's completely irrelevant that we didn't work out every little detail for ourselves."

"Why?"

"Other than pride? We know the scientific principles behind technology. If we don't understand this particular theory, I trust in us to learn it soon enough. There's very little we can't grasp once it's fully explained and broken down into its basic equations. But that's just the clinical analysis. From a moral point of view, consider this: when the Americans first sent a man to the Moon, there were people living in Africa and South America and Asia who had never seen a lightbulb, or known of electricity or antibiotics. There were even Americans who didn't have running water to their houses, or an indoor toilet. Does that mean they shouldn't have been given access to electricity or modem medicine, because they personally didn't invent it? It might not have been their local community's knowledge, but it was human knowledge. We don't have a clue how to build the nullvoid drive that the Ring Empire's Outbounds employed in their intergalactic ships, but the knowledge is there, developed by sentient entities. Why shouldn't we have access to that? Because it's a shortcut? Because we don't have to spend centuries of time developing it for ourselves? In what way will using ideas other than our own demean and diminish us? All knowledge should be cherished, not denied."

"I believe you would make an excellent dragon, Lawrence."

A week away from Aldebaran they began to review tactics. Prime had been tracking the Norvelle from the moment it went FTL, twenty-five minutes after they had. There was a second starship, presumably with the other Roderick onboard, following another forty minutes behind that.

"He's persistent," Denise acknowledged at breakfast. Both of them were aware of the tracking data lurking in their minds. Prime supplied it to them along with a host of other readings from the ship's principal systems.

"We know that. What we don't know is what kind of action he'll take."

"Not much to start with," she said. "He will have to assess what's out there, the same as us. Which gives us a window."

"For what?"

"We use our weapons to mine his exodus point If they lock on and fire immediately when the Norvelle comes out of FTL, he'll never know what hit him."

"They, okay? They will never know what hit them. There are over three hundred crew onboard. We are not exterminating them just because you have a problem with other people's ideology. This is a first-contact situation, and if you play it this way the first thing the dragons will ever see us do is blow up one of our own ships. They also might not like the way we scatter and detonate nukes across their space. So just drop that idea. And don't forget as well that Captain Manet has a hell of a lot more deep-space combat experience than we do. He knows the Norvelle's vulnerabilities, he'll be on his guard. They don't have to exodus where we expect They could well be launching a nuclear defense salvo as they exodus. We can't afford to take him on in this arena."

"Nor can we just roll over and give in. Not now that we're finally here at Aldebaran."

"Yes, at Aldebaran, where you came to return the dragon to its own kind. Don't let that goal slip from you now. Leave the Rodericks to sort out their own dispute."

"You'd sell your soul for a ticket home, wouldn't you?"

"I left my soul at home."

They stared at each other for a long time.

"All right," Denise said. "How do you suggest we handle this?"

"Talk to the dragons. Explain to them how vulnerable our society is to sudden changes of this magnitude, and ask them to take that into account. All they have to do is wait another three hours and give the same information to the other starship."

"Suppose the Norvelle Roderick starts shooting?"

"Then we defend ourselves. But I don't expect he will. We're going to be in the dragons' home system, and we have one of their own kind onboard. In my book, that doesn't make us a likely target of opportunity."

"Fine, but I'm going to keep our weapons suite at level-one readiness status. If that bastard tries anything tricky I won't hesitate to use it"

"I know. But let's try not to forget what is going to happen after exodus. One way or another the human race will alter and diverge. It's important to me at least that those fresh starts aren't built on bloodshed."

* * *

On the last day inside the compression drive wormhole Denise woke early. She hadn't been this wired since the day the invasion fleet arrived over Thallspring. Today was what she'd dedicated almost all of her life to, and it wasn't happening the way they'd expected. So much time and preparation had been spent planning how to get the Arnoon dragon back here. Problems were supposed to be eliminated on Thallspring, giving her a clean run, not follow her here.

She was still tempted to scatter the weapons after exodus. But Lawrence was right, damn him. Killing people without warning wasn't the right way to go about this. Such a thing went against every dream she cherished for her own fresh start.

The whole notion was such a wonderful coda to the whole project of returning the dragon. Another human colony at some unimaginably vast distance across the galaxy. One that had full patternform technology to sustain it. She was going to bring the children up in a world where the old human ills of competition and jealousy had no part. A star where there would never be any danger of cultural contamination from Earth and its colonies, old and new. Just in case. Just in case the rest of the human race erased itself from galactic history. Just in case the people of Thallspring didn't blithely accept Arnoon's gift of knowledge, and turned it to less than benevolent ends. Just in case Earth obtained dragon knowledge to misuse. Which was now going to happen.

The concept of a New Arnoon depended on the dragons. She needed their patternform technology. Their starship drive. Their information about stars and habitable planets across the galaxy. She had expected to spend months, if not years, at Aldebaran, learning new wonders, helping the Arnoon dragon grow and develop into its adult form. Now she might have only ninety minutes.

Yes, scattering the weapons in an attack formation was extremely tempting.

Instead she had a shower and dressed in clean clothes, a Z-B-issue sweatshirt and trousers belonging to some small crewman. With sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, she went through the bridge into the small senior officer lounge that she and Lawrence used as their canteen. He'd had his late-night snack again. As usual there were a couple of plastic cups on the central table, rings of tacky tea on the surface. Doughnuts and remnants of doughnuts on and around a plate—he only ever seemed to eat the bits with jam on them. A media card was showing the end of some play on a bare stage, the actors frozen as they took the curtain call.

If nothing else, the voyage reminded her of the time in the bungalow with Josep and Raymond. She told Prime to clear the mess and started rummaging through mealpacks as the lounge's domestic robot trundled over.

Lawrence came through a couple of minutes later, his hair damp from the shower. "Couldn't sleep," he confessed.

"Me too." She gave him his breakfast—bagels with scrambled egg and smoked salmon.

He tucked in appreciatively. "Thanks."

Denise sat opposite him, sipping her tea. "Any last-minute flashes of genius how to avoid a confrontation?"

"'Fraid not. Sorry."

"Me neither."

"It all boils down to the dragons themselves. We just don't know enough about them. I've been reviewing the memories our dragon has of past dragon star civilizations. There aren't many. We're limited to generalizations, and not too many of them. They just seem to passively suck up information and filter out the useful chunks for their descendants to inherit. That does seem to imply they're relatively benign."

"I hope so." She watched him shoveling down his food. "Aren't you even nervous?"

"No point. It won't do us any good."

"I was never nervous in Memu Bay."

"That's because you knew what you were doing. You were in control. Welcome to being on the receiving end."

"Do you really think they're benign?"

"Yes. But don't equate that to being on our side. If we ask for their help against others of our race, that will mean them getting involved in human affairs and politics. We would have to justify our appeal. That could well mean they judge us."

"Where do you come up with all this philosophy from? Are you some kind of secret xenopsychologist?"

He drank down the last of his orange juice and produced his broad, annoying grin. "One day, remind me to tell you how I used to waste away my childhood. You don't spend three years traveling with the Ultema without learning something about the alien perspective."

They went into the bridge for exodus. Prime spent two hours readying the fusion drive for ignition as soon as they were out of the wormhole. Console screens came on as Lawrence and Denise prioritized external sensor imagery.

"Are you receiving all this?" Lawrence asked the dragon. During the voyage they'd increased the bandwidth to the Xianti with several hundred fiberoptic cables, linking it directly to the Koribu's network.

"Yes, thank you," the dragon replied.

"Thirty seconds," Denise said.

Lawrence watched the displays as the energy inverter powered down. Half of the camera images lost the vague nothingness of the wormhole interior to a blank carmine glare. The other half showed stars gleaming bright against ordinary space. Radar found no solid object within five hundred kilometers. Prime brought more sensors online. Lawrence used his optronic membranes to receive the imagery, with Prime giving him a perspective from the front of the compression drive section.

Koribu had emerged forty million kilometers above Aldebaran's nebulous photosphere. To Lawrence it looked as though the starship were soaring across an ocean of featureless luminous red mist. The horizon was so distant it appeared to be above them. There was no discernible curvature. Star and space were two-dimensional absolutes.

Indigo symbols flowed across the image. Most of them concerned the Koribu's thermal profile. Infrared radiation from the star was soaking into the fuselage. Prime fired the secondary rocket engines, initiating a slow barbecue roll maneuver so that the heat was distributed evenly around the structure.

"Heat exchangers are coping for now," Denise said. "It's warmer than we were expecting, though. We might need to raise our orbit at some point."

"Radiation is strong, as well. Solar wind density is high. There's a lot of particle activity out there. That's going to do us more damage than the heat."

When he shifted his perspective to look back down along the fuselage he saw lines of pale violet light flicker and dance across struts and foil insulation. Metal components gleamed the brightest as the phosphorescent shimmer writhed across them. "Hey, we're picking up some version of Saint Elmo's fire."

"I hope our insulation's up to it"

"Me too. Okay, long-range radar is powering up." Six multiphase antennae were unfolding from their sheaths around the middle of the cargo section, flat ash-gray rectangles measuring twenty meters down their long edge. They flipped back parallel to the fuselage and began probing the chaotic climate boiling around the Koribu.

Prime overlaid their sweep across the visual imagery. A point of solid matter appeared forty-three thousand kilometers away, in an orbit two thousand kilometers lower than the Koribu's. Another one was detected fifty thousand kilometers away. A third was over seventy-two thousand kilometers distant. The radar's focus shifted to produce a higher resolution return of the first. It was twenty kilometers across, roughly circular, although the edges had broad, curving serrations, and it thickened considerably toward the center.

"More like a flower than a dragon," Lawrence murmured.

The radar had detected another seven points of mass out to 115,000 kilometers, all the same size as the first.

"Are they the dragons?" Denise asked breathlessly.

"I believe so," the dragon said.

"There must be thousands of them."

"Millions," Lawrence said. The idea was exhilarating. Until now they hadn't known for certain that the dragons existed. They could only assume that Aldebaran's gravity had attracted the eggs when the star was bright and adolescent, and that its expansion had hatched them. Now, here was the final proof. Humans were no longer alone in the universe, and the Ring Empire really had flourished when the galaxy was younger.

All his earlier daydreams and beliefs had been justified.

I CAN go home.

The Koribu's main telescope was swinging around to point at the first dragon. Against the uniform red glare it showed as a simple, dark speck. When the communication dish locked on it detected low emissions in several electromagnetic bands.

"Are you ready?" Denise asked. She sounded as if she were prompting a small child.

"I am," the dragon said.

"Then say hello."

The Arnoon dragon transmitted a pulse of data from the communications dish and began repeating at half-second intervals. It was a simple sequence of mathematical symbols in the language stored within its own memory.

The Aldebaran dragon answered with a much longer pulse, little of which could be translated. Lawrence and Denise yelled in delight, clapping their hands. He gave her a quick kiss and a hug, overtaken by the moment; then they settled back to observe the exchange.

The Arnoon dragon began sending the information they'd prepared. A translation dictionary for what little it had of its own language and the datapool English equivalent. After that there came a more complete English dictionary, with interconnected entries so that meanings and concepts would build into a cohesive whole. Syntax and communication protocols followed. Finally it sent a short, encyclopedic file on humans.

Less than three seconds after the last pulse was sent, the Aldebaran dragon said: "Welcome to our star. It is always pleasing to accept new information in any form."

Lawrence grinned. "Turing test," he said quietly to Denise. "Even if it isn't pleased, it understands the principle; it's trying to be polite."

Denise nodded and took a breath. "Thank you. We are happy to be here. My name is Denise Ebourn. Do you have a designation?"

"I am One."

She flashed Lawrence a perplexed glance. "Does that have any significance?"

"I am the first dragon you contacted. One."

"Ah, I see." Denise reddened slightly as Lawrence gave her a malicious sneer. "One, we have brought one of your own kind that has been damaged."

The Koribu's sensors suddenly reported a bombardment of radar-style pulses. The whole magnetic environment around the starship altered, oscillating rapidly. Their one neutrino scanner recorded emissions off the end of its scale.

"In what form are you carrying one of us?" One asked.

"Go ahead," Denise told the Arnoon dragon. It began transmitting a pulse containing a summary of its own history.

"I understand," One said. "You brought this fragment to us believing we would want you to. I thank you for your concern. Unfortunately, in this respect your voyage here has been fruitless." '

"What do you mean?"

"We have no interest in the fragment."

Denise couldn't believe what One had said. The translation dictionary must have glitched. "Do you mean you can't repair it?"

"No. We have no interest in repairing or re-forming it. Did you not comprehend what it was?"

"Yes. It's one of your eggs."

"It is. As such it is irrelevant. We release millions of eggs every year. Only a fraction of them are ever captured by a star's gravity. The others are simply lost. Or they crash as your fragment did. Some are even intercepted by biological species such as yourselves and mined for information. We do not concern ourselves with them. I would suggest the analogy that they mean as much to us as a single human sperm does to you."

"But... It's alive now. It thinks. It's a rational, sentient being."

"It was not. It was a fragment that was slowly decaying until you discovered it and implanted this awareness."

"Are you saying we shouldn't have done that?"

"No. Each of our eggs is a hostage to chance. It is only a tiny fraction of the total that grow into a civilization such as this. Others contribute to the galactic knowledge base by more diverse means. The fragment you found has enhanced your species' understanding of the universe. In that respect it has been a success. We can add to our knowledge of you."

"Did you already know about us?" Lawrence asked.

"We are only sixty-five light-years from your world," One said. "We have been receiving your radio transmissions for centuries."

Lawrence rolled his eyes in dismay. "Great."

"Maybe this fragment means nothing to you," Denise said. "But it does to us. Could you repair it for us?"

"That is a null question. The fragment could never become one of us. It is not just its physical structure that is fragmented, its memory is also diminished. The two together make us what we are. We do not have a genetic code. It is information that enables us to evolve and adapt according to circumstances. To do this, we must have a complete set of memories. What you are asking for is for me to provide a new set of full memories and to integrate the fragment back into a whole egg. In which case it will become an egg again, nothing more. It would be released back out into the universe to take its chances again. If that is what you wish I can disassemble the fragment and use the molecules within a new egg."

"No," Denise said quickly. "Isn't there some way it can grow from what it is into something like you?"

"Not without abandoning what it is now."

Denise bowed her head until it almost touched the console. She was close to weeping. The village had risked so much to bring their dragon back here. People had died to achieve it. Now, doing what they believed in had been exposed as a particularly human folly, children getting sentimental over an injured puppy.

A curious sound roused her. Lawrence was chortling.

"What?" she snapped.

"Hubris always hits hard. Especially to an idealist like you. Because of your convictions, everybody else is wrong; mostly they're not even allowed to have different opinions. And now you have to face up to the fact that what you've done is wrong. You've been proved guilty of anthropomorphism."

"I am not. Our dragon is a sentient creature who deserves respect. Its origins don't matter. What it is now is what counts. We did the right thing bringing it here. The fact that it's unique makes it even more deserving. I would do the same thing all over again. It deserves the chance to evolve; it has a right to life."

"A human right?"

"Yes," she growled. "A human right. It's also a universal right. We rescued the dragon from nonexistence, we took from it, and now we have to give it back. I don't care what you think, I know I'm right, and to hell with you."

"Fate, you are stubborn." He activated the communication link. "One, can you tell me if you share knowledge with other species?"

His tone was so sharp that Denise gave him a suspicious glare. He just gave her his annoying broad smile.

"We do," One replied.

"Any knowledge?"

"Yes. It is our existence."

"Then you wouldn't object if we use patternform sequencers to try to enhance our dragon in a way we and it consider appropriate?"

"No."

Denise smiled her thanks at him. It wasn't what she'd wanted, but at least it gave them a chance to help their dragon grow into something other than an inert mass.

"Does it worry you that other species might misuse such knowledge?" Lawrence asked. "For example, if they use your knowledge to build weapons?"

"If you know how to interpret and understand the data, then you already have the capability to build weapons of a similar nature. Weapons are not a technological problem. They result from the nature of a species' society."

"In other words, we have to be responsible for ourselves."

"Of course," One replied.

"Can we ask for your help in that respect as well?"

"In what context?"

"Other members of our species will be arriving soon. Don't give your knowledge to them."

"Knowledge is universal. It cannot be denied."

"I don't want it denied. Just withheld for a short time, at least. Your knowledge could be very dangerous to our species if it is not shared universally. One of the people following us wishes to acquire a monopoly, so he can exploit it to impose his ideals on others. Do you view that as wrong?"

"In the context you have stated, it is wrong. But how do I know that those following you seek to dominate others of your species? How do I know it is not you who favor this course?"

Lawrence gave Denise an awkward shrug. "Damn, I've gone and triggered its paranoia. Any ideas?"

"Our dragon can tell you all about our intentions," Denise said.

"I would be willing to do that," the Arnoon dragon confirmed.

"That would not be acceptable," One told them. "The fragment's processing routines are derived from your genetic algorithms. It is your creature."

Denise cursed at the pane showing One's visual image, a tiny black splinter lost against the irradiated fog. "Now what?"

"Rely on human nature," Lawrence said. "May we approach you?" he asked One. "Our ship is being strained by this environment. Your umbra would provide shelter. And we'll be safer there."

"Safer relative to what?"

"Open space. The human following us may be violent. He will not risk using weapons close to you."

"Very well."

"After that, could you wait until a third ship arrives? The information could then be given to all of us simultaneously. That would achieve a balance, wouldn't it?"

"I will wait."

Simon had spent the entire voyage in the Norvelle's sickbay. After the first fortnight, the two doctors onboard had begun his dermal regeneration treatment. New skin was now growing successfully over the deeper burns. He found the whole process extremely tiring; the new growth seemed to devour energy from the rest of his body. Fortunately the pursuit of the Koribu didn't require his attention.

Captain Sebastian Manet had been surprised at the course the hijacked starship had taken. "They're heading for Aldebaran," he'd said as soon as Simon's stretcher was maneuvered through the Xianti's airlock tunnel.

Simon's personal AS scrolled data on the star. "A red giant? Are there any planets there?"

"The astronomers have never found any," Manet said. "However, we don't know for sure. There have never been any missions to Aldebaran. Nobody's pure science budget ever ran to that."

"Interesting. So we could well have an alien civilization living closer to us than we ever knew: right inside our sphere of influence, in fact."

The captain's front of disapproval faded slightly. "Is that what all this is about?"

"Yes. Now how long before we can depart?"

"I wanted to talk to you about that."

"There is no discussion over this matter."

"It will take a hundred and four days to reach Aldebaran from here. We will barely have enough fuel to return."

"But we do have the capacity?"

"Just. Assuming nothing goes wrong. There's also the crew to consider. They did not anticipate an extra two hundred days' flight time plus however long we remain in the Aldebaran system itself."

"Rubbish. I know you space-types. They will relish the opportunity of performing first contact."

"Then what about the ground forces on Thallspring? When will we return for them?"

"Captain, you will either give the order to go FTL or tell me you will not."

Sebastian Manet gave the obscured figure on the stretcher a hateful glance. "Very well. We can go FTL in another eight minutes."

They had barely spoken in the hundred days that followed. Simon had spent a lot of the time asleep, as the treatments ate into his reserves of strength. In his waking hours he reviewed every scrap of data they'd acquired on the Arnoon alien, hoping for some insight. Each day he checked the tracking data. Koribu remained a resolute twenty-six minutes and thirteen seconds ahead of them. He began to make his own plans for exodus. Manet, along with his crew, could not be trusted with what needed to be done, and they couldn't be allowed to interfere. Simon's personal AS reviewed and confirmed all the command codes, ensuring he retained ultimate authority over the starship.

Ten days before the exodus Simon ordered the doctors to end his treatments. The interval would allow him to build his strength up again.

On the day itself he remained in sickbay; the doctors and medical staff had been dismissed. He lay on the bed, content that the pain had reduced over the last three months. He would have the physical resources to carry this out. His DNI and optronic membrane linked him with every vital sensor outside the starship, their data formatted by his personal AS into a comprehensive wraparound display, putting his perception point at the front of the starship. At the moment it was surrounded by a formless gray haze, with an ebony knot far ahead of them. Indigo ranging data scrolled across it.

Simon kept switching his attention between it and the other knot, the one following them forty minutes behind. He knew the SK9 had somehow got himself up to orbit and into a starship. There was only one reason he'd do that.

"Shouldn't be long now," Captain Manet announced. "We're detecting the photosphere."

Beyond the knot representing the Koribu, a faint drizzle of black was creeping through the nothingness, as if space were coming to an end outside the compression wormhole. Then the knot began to waver, expanding as it lost density. It vanished.

"They left that late," Manet said. "Only forty million kilometers out."

"We need to be close to them," Simon said.

"Yes, I know. But I'm going to shift our inclination. If they're really hostile they'll mine the exodus zone."

Simon spent the next twenty-five minutes watching the black barrier of the star's photosphere coming toward them, wondering what Newton and his friends were doing out there in real space. With five minutes to go until their own exodus, Manet armed the Norvelle's missiles in preparation. The ship's AS primed the fusion drive under the bridge crew's supervision. Then the black wall was unnervingly close, and beginning to pick up speed. It fractured radially, with red streaks fizzling through. Then the huge starship was sailing high above a glaring carmine smog that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.

Columns of indigo digits streamed around Simon, mutating wildly as they went. There was no mass point within five hundred kilometers. No sensor radiation fell across them. Infrared energy began to soak the fuselage. The big secondary chemical rocket engines around the cargo section flared brightly, initiating a slow thermal roll. Large rectangular radar antennae began to deploy.

Simon used his command capability to launch a salvo of missiles. Pressure doors throughout the Norvelle closed and locked, isolating the crew.

"What are you doing?" Sebastian Manet demanded.

"That's perfectly obvious, Captain. The Norvelle is my ship, and I am carrying out my mission." He canceled the link and shut down all internal communications channels.

On the bridge, Sebastian Manet stared on helplessly as his DNI was denied access to the starship's network. The console displays darkened. Two of the bridge officers hammered on the pressure door with their fists. Nobody heard them.

"Sweet Fate, they've fired their missiles," Lawrence said.

"Not at us," Denise assured him.

"What then? Oh!"

"Scatter pattern. I think they're going to try to strike the other ship at exodus."

Lawrence opened the link to One. "Will you now accept that your knowledge shouldn't be given to this starship?"

"The starship's actions support your contention so far. Our knowledge will be withheld pending resolution of this event."

"Thank you." He turned to Denise. "Can we intercept those missiles?"

"No. We're too far away."

"Shit. Get Prime to scan for the exodus. Use our main communication dish to broadcast a warning."

Indigo targeting graphics locked on to a section of space eighteen thousand kilometers away as the Norvelle's radar detected an object under acceleration. Simon's visual focus leaped across the distance. A long, incandescent spark burned hard above the mellow radiance of the photosphere. It was moving fast, descending.

"Fusion flame," the starship's AS reported. "Spectral pattern identical to our own. Radar substantiates vehicle size. It is the Koribu."

"Where are they going?" Simon asked.

Several plot lines curved out of the dazzling plume. The Norvelle's long-range radar began to sweep along them. It swiftly found the destination.

"A solid structure, type unknown," the AS said. "Twenty kilometers across, circular, very regular."

"Take us down to it," Simon ordered.

On the Clichane's bridge, Simon Roderick sat behind the captain as they approached exodus. Console panes counted down the last few seconds. Camera images turned a garish carmine. A small cheer went round the bridge officers. Simon's DNI relayed the radar data directly to him. No large, solid objects within five hundred kilometers. Several small points registered. Extraneous radar pulses were illuminating their fuselage. The AS confirmed their signature as the long-range type carried by both the Koribu and the Norvelle. It began plotting their locations.

"Receiving communications," the captain said. "Somebody's shouting." The AS showed a very powerful transmission beamed straight at them.

"Your exodus point is mined. Launch defense salvo."

"Is that the Norvelle?" Simon asked.

"There is no identification code," the AS told him.

Simon's personal AS checked the radar image again. The small points were now moving under heavy acceleration, tearing straight toward them. Clichane's AS immediately fired a countersalvo. The missiles slid out of their launch cradles around the cargo section. Solid rocket motors ignited, accelerating them at over sixty gravities. Sensors were degraded by the ion wind and radiation rising from the photosphere. The missiles' onboard programs tried to compensate. But the attacking missiles were also using countermeasures and em pulses. The defenders responded with their own volley of electronic treachery.

The Clichane's AS acknowledged that the defense salvo wouldn't be able to achieve precision elimination strikes. Attacking missiles would breach the defenses. It ordered separation, and the swarm blossomed as each missile discharged its multiple warheads. They were still inside safe-distance limit, but the attacking missiles were closing. The AS had no choice.

A huge corona of nuclear fire erupted around the Clichane as the barrage of defending warheads detonated. The spherical plasma shock waves clashed and merged, forming a hellish shield of seething raw energy. Secondary explosions ripped long ebony twisters through the rampaging ions, short-lived hypervelocity spikes that tried to assail the star-ship.

At the center of the fusion inferno the Clichane was buffeted by radiation. Its external sensors were blinded as hard X-rays burned up their circuitry. Em pulses induced huge power surges along electrical cables and metal structures. Temperature escalated, blackening the thermal protection foam before the surface began to ablate, shedding scabby charcoal flakes. The residual foam bubbled like molten tar. A hurricane of elementary particles washed across the besieged fuselage. In the bridge and throughout the life support wheels radiation monitors began a shrill whistle of alarm. Emergency pressure valves began venting deuterium gas from tanks around the fusion drive section as the liquid started to boil from the electromagnetic energy input. Thermal radiator panels ruptured, jetting their sticky, steaming fluid into the hurricane of neutrons swirling round the giant starship.

Simon clung to one of the consoles as the bridge shook. Loud, harsh, metallic creaking sounds reverberated through the life support wheel structure as the lights flickered. The radiation alarm kept up its insistent whistle. Schematics had turned completely red. The AS was battling to compensate for massive systems failure, rerouting power and data, isolating leaking tanks and fractured pipes. Backup thermal reservoirs were used to absorb the heat seeping through the fuselage structure. Over half of the secondary rockets were disabled. The AS fired the remaining engines in short bursts, attempting to counter the twisting impulses from the larger vents.

The whistle alarm slowly faded. One of the officers was throwing up. Simon had to force himself to let go of the console. His heartbeat was racing badly.

"We weren't hit," the captain said incredulously.

"How do you know?" Simon asked. There was no external sensor data available at all.

"We're still alive."

The officers had begun talking urgently to the AS; fingers skidded over the console keyboards as they tried to pull useful information from the degraded network. Reserve sensors deployed from their sheaths. The AS located the two radar sources again. They were both under acceleration.

"How long before we can get after them?" Simon asked.

"I should have an answer for you in about a week," the captain said.

* * *

The Koribu's telescope immediately blanked out as the nuclear warheads exploded around the Clichane. Filter programs compensated as the fury slowly diminished. They saw the starship wreathed in coiling gas plumes. They were alive with scintillations from the radiation blitz, entombing the giant ship in a nebula of shooting stars. Venting had imparted a slow tumble. Lawrence didn't like to think how much liquid would have to be evacuated to move something so massive. Then they saw a flare of rocket motors around the cargo section as the AS attempted to stabilize their attitude.

Lawrence realized he'd been holding his breath for a long time. "They're alive, then," he said.

"Unless the Norvelle fires at them again," Denise said. "With the state they're in, I doubt they'll be able to defend themselves."

"Can you defend yourself against that kind of attack?" Lawrence asked One.

"No," One replied. "There is no reason for us to be armed. We have nothing other than knowledge. And that we give..."

"Yeah, you live to share," Lawrence said. "What happens when other species do threaten you?"

"We incorporate the knowledge of the threat"

"That's it?" Denise asked. "That's all you do, remember being destroyed?"

"We exist to acquire and distribute knowledge. We hatch in every sector of the galaxy and examine what surrounds us. Once that has been accomplished and the sun cools again, our existence there ends. Another sun will eventually replace it. The overall processing of knowledge will continue no matter how many individuals of our species are exterminated. Very few other species have sufficient munitions to destroy every one of us. By now our eggs have probably reached other galaxies."

"Are you saying you don't care if you're destroyed?"

"Care is an emotion I do not possess. You know it because it is bound with your sense of individuality. We are not a hive mind, but we are aware of ourselves as a civilization that could well prove to be eternal. All events we encounter contribute to what we are and what we will become. All individuality ends eventually. We birthed ourselves in acknowledgment of that."

"But the person in command of the second starship could threaten to destroy you if he realizes how vulnerable you are."

"If threatened I will provide the knowledge required. The threat will end."

"You said you'd withhold it," Lawrence said.

"In the assumption that would provide a balance for your species. You claimed the third starship would deliver our knowledge to your entire race. That is no longer possible."

"We're going to have to go to Earth," Denise said. "Carry the knowledge ourselves and get there ahead of the Norvelle. Damn Roderick to hell. I didn't want this."

Lawrence held up a finger. "One, will you help repair the starship that has just been damaged?"

"Yes. A patternform can be provided that will modify itself to perform the operation."

"So if we disable the Norvelle, the balance will be restored. They can both be repaired simultaneously. There would be no monopoly when they return to Earth."

"Will you make us a weapon that can disable the Norvelle?" Denise asked quickly.

"No," One said. "You may have knowledge that can be used to build a weapon."

"How long would it take to build?"

"First you would have to learn how to apply patternform systems. Then you must integrate the knowledge for the weapon to be extruded."

"Yes. How long?'

"You have some familiarity with patternform systems. This would be to your advantage. I estimate you would require as little as three weeks."

Frustration made Denise want to hit something. Anything. The Koribu and the Norvelle were equally matched. If they launched a strike, the Norvelle would retaliate. They needed something else, a weapon that would give them an advantage.

"But you already have a weapon we can use," Lawrence said quietly.

The first thing the Norvelle's sensors confirmed was the alien structure's complete lack of rotation in any direction. Somehow it held its attitude stable against the gusts of thick solar wind that blew constantly from the turbulent photosphere. Its shape gradually resolved during their approach: circular, divided into twenty scalloplike sections that curved down toward the surface of the star. Their edges were rounded and very smooth, tapering down to a few tens of meters thick. Its bulk was concentrated in the middle, with a small aperture at the very center.

Simon thought it might be a docking port of some kind, although he wasn't convinced. Even for an alien design it was a very strange habitat.

The apex of each scallop sprouted three slender ridges that shone a livid scarlet, radiating heat away out toward the stars, leaving the rest of the upper surface considerably cooler. The AS postulated that this was how the structure generated its power, exploiting the thermal difference. To do so, the ridges could well be a type of thermal superconductor. An interesting technology, Simon thought, but hardly on a level with nanonic systems.

The Koribu's fusion burn ended, rendezvousing it with the alien structure. It hung inside the umbra, three kilometers from the surface. Simon waited, half expecting to see an engineering shuttle fly over into the aperture.

"What are you doing?" he muttered to himself.

Norvelle's long-range radar continued to scan around. The AS detected another eleven similarly sized alien objects within 150,000 kilometers. If they were some alien version of habitats, it gave him a seriously large population base to deal with. There must be millions of similar structures in orbit around the red giant.

"Have we intercepted any interstructure communications yet?" he asked the starship's AS.

"Not in the electromagnetic spectrum. They could be using lasers, or masers. In order to intercept them we would have to insert ourselves into the beam."

"Never mind." He continued to study the structure. When they were two thousand kilometers away, Norvelle extended its magnetometer booms. The alien structure was the core of a vast magnetic field. Around the center it was as dense as a tokamak containment field. Vast, invisible flux wings extended for hundreds of kilometers below the star-facing surface. Simon altered the calibration of the main radar and refocused the telescope. The AS combined the data from each, presenting it as a false-color thematic image.

Solar wind was being scooped up by the magnetic field and pulled inward. He could see tenuous eddies of the stuff forming as it streamed up toward the hidden center of the structure's star-facing surface.

He knew it couldn't be a habitat. A machine of some kind, then. One that consumed solar wind particles. What sort of machine did that? He knew the aliens had nanonic systems. They must be converting the solar wind into artifacts of some kind. The production capacity represented by the millions of structures was awesome. Although that would be severely limited by the minuscule quantity of mass that the magnetic field scooped up. If you had that kind of ability, why use it like this?

That was when he recognized what the structures were.

"Open a link to the Koribu," Simon ordered the AS. "Lawrence Newton, can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear. Is this Simon Roderick?"

"It is."

"Your clone told us about you."

"I don't suppose he was very flattering."

"He made some strong claims. Your attack on the Clichane would seem to validate them."

"If you know about me, you know why I had to do that."

"I know your rationale for the attack. That doesn't mean I agree with it."

"I've seen your file, Newton. You gave up everything, a whole world, for the chance to fly explorer starships. You know there is more to the human condition than what we are today. And now we can realize that goal for everyone."

"Whether they want it or not."

"It is the underclass that prevented you from making those flights you dreamed of. They restricted you more than they ever did me."

"I'm not arguing with you. I'm telling you, I will not allow you to impose change on people. You and your clone may have the information together."

"Is it yours to give?"

"Yes."

"I think not. This isn't a habitat, is it, not some artifact? This is the alien itself. How utterly magnificent. A creature of pure space."

"Yes, this is the alien."

"One of them crashed on Arnoon, didn't they? That's what made the crater next to the village."

"Your research is very competent."

"It made no sense at first. Why an alien with nanonic technology would enlist human allies and steal a starship. It was damaged, it didn't have all of its abilities."

"And now we've brought it back to its own kind."

"What were you going to do with the technology, Newton?"

"Nothing. I'm going home."

"I don't believe that, either. You're from a Board family. You would use it to your advantage, just like me."

"Wrong. I suggest you go back to the Clichane and help its crew. Once you've done that the technology will be made available."

"Have you really convinced the aliens to cooperate with you already? Or are you hiding something from me? Why don't you go back and help the Clichane?"

"This ship is in no condition to help anybody. We barely made it here."

"Then how were you planning to get home? Can the alien nanonics repair your ship? I suppose they can."

"They can."

"How interesting. In that case, I think I will remain with you and observe them in action." It was an almost perfect solution, he realized. If he parked the Norvelle in the alien's umbra his proximity to the Koribu would provide him with the greatest possible opportunity to obtain a physical sample of the nanonic technology. He began to wonder just how much of an ally the alien was to Newton. How would it react to any attempted interdiction of nanonic systems? Certainly there had been no repercussions from his attack on the Clichane. Before he took such an overt course of action he must at least try to establish communications with the alien. It could be that Newton was actually bluffing.

The Norvelle's fusion drive matched velocity with the vast alien, then slowly eased the starship into the umbra. It cut off, and the AS began firing the chemical rockets to refine their attitude. At that moment they were five kilometers from the surface of the alien, and twelve kilometers from the Koribu. Neither Newton nor the alien had responded to Simon's repetitive calls.

The Norvelle's magnetometer booms were still observing the titanic flux lines warping around the alien. Their pattern began to change, contracting like petals at sunset. But fast.

"What—" Simon managed to ask.

Lawrence had gone over the lifecycle of the dragons many times during the hundred-day voyage. Naturally, the creatures fascinated him. Then actually seeing them through the starship's sensors thrilled him even more. He loved their elegance. He even admired their philosophy, despite how frustrating it was to his situation.

Each dragon must have taken centuries to grow to its full size. Like Simon Roderick, he watched the magnetic field gather up wisps of solar wind, ingesting them for the active patternform system to alchemize—a slow, laborious process given the quantity involved. Some of the molecules were used to replenish and sustain the dragon's own body, but once it had reached its full size, most were given to the production of eggs. Each one took a long time to convene. Not only did its physical structure have to be put together a particle at a time, but those particles had to be loaded with data from the ever-shifting tides of knowledge possessed by the dragon star civilizations.

Once an egg was complete it would be sent off into interstellar space, to fall aimlessly through the galaxy. But the dragons were in orbit around Aldebaran, tied to the star by gravity. The eggs couldn't just be detached from the adult; they would simply drift around the same orbit. So the center of every dragon was a magnetic cannon, capable of accelerating an egg up to solar escape velocity.

The Norvelle was parked five kilometers from the muzzle when One fired. The egg, a solid sphere of matter seventytwo meters in diameter, struck the starship's complex and delicate compression drive section at over forty kilometers per second.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Every bed in the CLICHANE'S sickbay was occupied, mostly with victims of radiation burns sustained during the attack. Surrounding cabins had been converted to hold the overspill. The doctors walked around, checking vital signs, making sure their patients were comfortable. They didn't have a lot else to do. Prime, improved with genuine dragon routines, was orchestrating the patternform systems that had twined themselves through the flesh of each patient. This was a much more active application than the Arnoon dragon had ever achieved. The patternform had grown what resembled a network of veins over each man's skin; tubules infiltrated the body, multiplying around the organs and muscles inside. Particles roamed through the damaged tissue, repairing cells and resequencing DNA smashed apart by the X-ray barrage. The computing power required to control the operation in each person was phenomenal; patternform had grown the processing nodules as well. They hung under each bed like leaf-green wasp nests, their root tendrils connecting them to the parallel vein network.

Lawrence looked through a couple of the doors as he and Denise walked through the section. The men were all sleeping.

"They look peaceful," he said.

"So did you," she told him.

The converted cabins were split with the Norvelle crew members who had received more physical injuries when the dragon's egg struck. Their starship's axis had snapped from the egg impact, with two of the life support wheels being flung off into space as the broken sections tumbled away from One. Over a hundred crew had ejected in lifeboats. Those remaining in the two intact wheels had waited for the Koribu to rendezvous, then transferred over for the short journey to the Clichane.

Now the two remaining starships were parked in One's umbra as pattemform strands began to creep across them.

Simon Roderick was waiting for Lawrence and Denise outside a cabin with a closed hatch. The locks disengaged, and he pushed it open. They followed him in.

There was a single bed inside; the SK2 lay on it, also encased in pattemform systems. His legs and hand were being grown back. A Skin sustainer cabinet that had been brought into the cabin was smothered in a lacework of pattemform veins; they were harvesting the organic components and blood reserves for raw material to generate new tissue. Flaccid translucent sacs the shape of legs already extended from his stumps, with glutinous fluids circulating inside.

Denise's expression tightened as she looked down at the unconscious man. "What do you intend to do with him?"

"For the immediate future, he will be excluded from the Board, and most of his executive privileges will be revoked. House arrest, essentially. After that, who knows? I suspect it depends on what form Earth's society chooses to follow."

"Good enough," Lawrence said. He ignored the dirty look Denise threw him. "None of us exactly came out of this as saints."

"No," Simon agreed. "But then I never claimed to be."

"How will your clone siblings react to all this?"

"The same as we did. Not that it will really matter." He gave both of them a pointed look. "The captains will make sure the dragon knowledge is given to everybody when we return. They're already making plans to transfer the memories directly into Earth's datapool before Z-B even notices there's something different about their old starship. It'll be protected by this upgraded Prime, which should ensure equal access."

"You sound as though you disapprove."

"I almost do." Simon gestured at his clone sibling. "We're a chaotic race. His method would have given us a smooth transition."

"Where's the fun in that?" Lawrence said. "Tear down the uniculture, open your eyes, give people their identity back."

"Ah." Simon's eyebrows rose in modest censure. "I might have guessed."

"How long before the Clichane is flightworthy?" Denise asked.

"Another fortnight," Simon said. "Quite remarkable, really. Fortunately there's plenty of spare mass to restructure missing components. After all, we hardly need the weapons, or all that asset cargo now. Are you sure you don't want to come back with us? It will be an interesting time to live in."

"No," Denise said curtly.

Lawrence just smiled.

The Clichane's compression drive powered up, and the immense starship flashed out of space-time with a dizzying twist. The Koribu was left floating alone in the dragon's umbra. It was never going to fly again. Instead it was giving birth. Patternform had plaited the fuselage in a gridiron of crystalline stems that suckled at the minerals and compounds of the structure. From a distance it looked as though the starship was covered in a harlequin patchwork of gem frost; millions of slender amber, ruby and emerald facets flashed and glinted in the haze of warm light that spilled around the edge of the alien. Wider sapphire proboscises had penetrated tanks, siphoning out the liquids to contribute to the semiorganic growths sprouting on opposite sides of the cargo section. As the weeks progressed, they swelled out into chrysalids wrapped in a tight skin of diamond strand silk.

The Arnoon dragon, too, was metamorphosing. The Xianti's payload bay doors had been opened to space. Inside the bay, the cargo pod had split apart, exposing the dragon. Crystals threaded their way across the floor of the maintenance bay and encrusted the spaceplane. Their tips meshed with the particle structure of the dragon and began feeding it molecules and information.

Denise spent hours every day thinking with it. As there was no place for it within the Aldebaran dragon civilization, it had decided to go with her, to become a part of whatever society flowered from the genetic package. Dragon memories were reviewed and analyzed for templates of the abilities they sought. They began to incorporate functions that would allow it to be free-flying, to sense in every spectrum, to power itself with sunlight, to absorb solid cold matter, to retain its original personality. Dozens of notions taking on solid form.

After the Clichane left, Lawrence spent ten days undergoing extensive patternform treatment, transforming his body and resetting his DNA. He emerged as his teenage self, without Skin valves.

Denise looked him up and down and pursed her lips. "Very cute," she observed coyly.

The chrysalid cases split open and peeled back, revealing the Ring Empire-era starships that patternform had gestated—streamlined silver and magenta ellipsoids, with a necklace of drive fins and forward-swept power shields rising smoothly from the rear quarter. Lawrence gazed at his with a reckless enthusiasm that matched his new adolescence.

"I guess this is good-bye," Denise said.

He gave her an awkward grimace. "Yeah." Then his smile returned. "No, it's bon voyage. The way things are shaping up, it's not impossible that we'll meet again."

"All right, Lawrence, bon voyage it is." She gave him a soft kiss. "What are you going to name yours?"

"That's easy. Fool's Errand."

Denise laughed. "Mine's the Starflower."

"Sounds good."

The interior of the Fool's Errand comprised three circular lounges with concave walls. In their neutral state the cream-colored surfaces had the same texture as soft leather. Human-styled fittings could distend out of it as required. The lounges also made perfect auditoriums, capable of providing a 360-degree image that could show either sensor images or any of the i's that he'd loaded from the Koribu's multimedia library.

Lawrence walked into the forward lounge, enjoying the novelty of a standard gravity field. A single luxurious chair rose up out of the center of the floor. He settled himself in it and called up a visual sensor image. The front of the lounge melted away, showing him the Koribu's crystal gilded fuselage dead ahead.

In his mind, a broad crown of the starship's system icons burned a willing gold. He selected several, and the Fool's Errand slowly backed out of the inert chrysalis. An idiot's grin spread over his face as the ship's elegance and power became apparent. And he alone commanded it. The Starflower rose into view from the other side of the Koribu. He watched as Denise flew around to the drastically mutated maintenance bay. The Arnoon dragon waited at the center, elegant semi-organic segments closed against the main body, solar wing-sheets furled tight. Watching the Starflower touch it was like seeing two drops of water merging; the dragon was absorbed through the shimmering hull, leaving only a slight bulge to betray its presence. Then the Starflower moved out into clear space beyond One's umbra. Lawrence could see the strange forces gathering around the drive section as the power shields and fins shone like fragments of a blue-white star. It flung itself into the nullvoid.

"Thank you for your help," Lawrence told One.

"We will learn what you become," the dragon replied. "And we will remember you. This is what we are."

Lawrence selected his course, delving deep into some of the oldest memories the dragons possessed for the information. The engines gathered up their colossal strength and impelled the Fool's Errand into the nullvoid.

Nebulas are among the most beautiful objects in the sky, revered by astronomers across the galaxy. Fluoresced by stars hidden deep inside, they shade parsecs with the most magical patterns of shifting primordial light. Yet for all their grandeur they are transient. The stars that provide their ethereal beauty also blow out a hard wind of ions that slowly disperses the gas and dust. Gravity, too, plays its part, inexorably thinning out the streamers and clouds. Protostars perform the opposite function, their great glowing whorls sucking in the spectral tides, compressing them down to a central spark.

Their lifetimes are measured in millions of years only—negligible in galactic timescales.

Even the Ulodan Nebula, one of the thickest and darkest ever to form in the galaxy, was waning when the Ring Empire archaeologists came across the planet of the Mordiff. By the time of the Decadence War it was just a zone of interstellar space with a slightly higher than average gas density. Even then the Mordiff sun was cold and shrunken, no more than a glimmering red ember. Just a memory within the newborn dragon civilizations.

It took Lawrence Newton and the Fool's Errand a long time to find the cool star-husk with its single lonely planet. But eventually the beautiful starship fell from the sky and landed beside the one remaining relic of the Mordiff.

Lawrence put on a spacesuit and stepped down onto the planet's surface. There was no air left: it had bled away millions of years ago. The sand under his boots had frozen to a crust harder than iron. But there was still light. High above the horizon, the galactic core formed a lambent white swirl that occupied nearly a tenth of the sky. It cast a sharp shadow behind him as he walked.

This was a landscape bleaker than any he had ever known. Rock outcrops were sharp and fractured: even the stones that littered the ground were jagged. Over millions of years, cold had drawn the very color from the land. He knew this planet had no future left. That knowledge didn't bother him; he had come for its past.

He paused on a low ridge and looked up at the terminus. It was strange, he thought, that a race so warlike and terrible could build a machine so much greater than themselves.

The terminus was a broad toroid, snow-white in color, its inner aperture measuring three kilometers in diameter. Five giant buttress towers supported it a kilometer off the ground. Outcrops of rock rested against the base of each one, as if they were waves breaking against a cliff. Neither cold nor entropy had affected the titanic artifact; even geology had been defeated by it. The Ring Empire archaeologists weren't even sure it was made from matter in the normal sense. Nothing else of the Mordiff remained, no ruins, no monuments. Only the terminus, their failed bid for immortality.

Harsh turquoise light shone down out of the center, illuminating the frozen sand underneath. Lawrence was vaguely disappointed he couldn't actually see the wormhole, but the blue light acted like a veil across the aperture.

After a while Lawrence walked back to the Fool's Errand.

He sat on his seat in the forward lounge and guided the star-ship under the toroid. It rose slowly into the blue haze. For a second the sensors could see nothing; then they were inside the wormhole. A tube of pale violet light stretched away from the starship. Ahead lay the future, billions of years stretching out to the end of the galaxy, when even the terminus fell into the black hole. In the other direction lay the past. Fool's Errand flew back into history.

The three sister planets were moving into their major conjunction. It was a spectacular sight as the bright crescents lined up above the gentle rolling hills of New Arnoon. Denise was sitting in the shade of a big cigni tree as they slid together, its ginger leaves casting a broad dapple over the grass around her. The cluster of seven-year-olds sitting on the ground sighed and cooed at the astral exhibition. If they squinted really hard, they could just make out hair-thin lines cutting across the distant planets. The silver threads of the world web spun out by the dragon in geostationary orbit were becoming more complex as the englobing progressed. Soon the whole world would be caged. These were exciting times for the children.

"Finish it," Jones Johnson whined plaintively. "Please, Denise!"

But not as exciting as other people used to have, she thought in amusement. Little Jones was getting agitated, his face screwed up with urgency.

"Finish! Finish!" the rest of them chanted.

"All right," she said.

Lawrence Newton tried not to show any nerves as he presented his ticket to the departures desk in the center of the terminal building. Templeton Spaceport was a small affair to the north of the domed city, a couple of runways and five hangars. It was built with arrivals in mind, twenty thousand at a time when one of McArthur's starships decelerated into orbit. Traffic in the other direction was small and open to scrutiny.

The receptionist scanned his ticket in and smiled as her sheet screen scrolled confirmation. "Do you have any baggage?" she asked.

"Er, one," Lawrence said. He was so relieved the Prime had guarded him from his father's askpings he made a hash of lifting the case onto her scales. She leaned over and helped him.

"Why are you going?" she asked.

"I, er, my family is sending me to university on Earth," he stammered.

"Lucky you," she said brightly. "You can go through to the lounge now, Mr. Newton. Your flight leaves in forty minutes. If the snowplows can keep the runway clear."

"Thanks." His stomach felt curiously light.

Starflight! I'm going to have a starflight. I really am.

And that made up for absolutely everything.

He straightened his back and walked toward the lounge door. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vinnie Carlton hanging around by the main entrance. Lawrence gave him a surreptitious thumbs-up. Vinnie winked back.

The lounge doors closed behind him. Ahead of him, the picture window gave him a view out over the long arrowhead-shaped spaceplane that was due to take him up to the Eilean. Lawrence hurried forward for a better look.

Vinnie Carlton watched the lounge doors shut He went out to the taxi rank and climbed into the first of the little white bubbles. "Leith dome," he told the vehicle's AS.

A thin hail of ice twisted about them on the road. Vinnie settled back in the seat, closed his eyes and concentrated. The flesh on his face rippled; characteristics began to shift, his nose flattening slightly, chin protruding, eyebrows straightening. He opened his eyes, now shaded halfway between gray and green. When he looked in the taxi's mirror to check, Lawrence Newton's young features looked back at him. It had been so many months he barely recognized himself.

Sadly he acknowledged that for all the perfect physical regeneration patternform had given him, he could never project the naivetй that his younger self had always possessed. An inevitable consequence, he thought—not just from the twenty years of experience he owned, but also the result of living beside his earlier self for so long. That proximity had been so much harder than he'd ever imagined. There had been so many times when, as Vinnie, he'd wanted to give that love-stricken, horrifyingly ignorant teenage Lawrence a damn good kicking.

But he hadn't For all those months he'd been a good friend on every level, gritting his teeth as he watched the doomed love affair play out from a vantage point that was far too close. Time and again, when they'd been out in a group, he'd seen the fear hidden in Roselyn's eyes when Lawrence was looking the other way. She must have known he'd find out eventually. Still she carried on, just as besotted and tragic as that desperate teenage boy, clinging to her fragile happiness. He'd lost count of the times he'd almost surrendered to his stormy emotions and whispered to her: "It'll be all right." Ultimately, he didn't have that right. For he didn't truly know yet if it would be.

The features on the fresh young face in the taxi's mirror had sunk into a drawn, nervous expression as the weight of twenty years and two broken lives emerged as part of its genuine identity. "Now you've really come home," he said to it.

The elevator took an age to get up to the right floor. Lawrence remembered the anxiety he'd felt as he left Amethi for Earth. This was worse. He took the memory chip from his pocket and studied it curiously. The very last episode of Flight: Horizon. And he still hadn't accessed the damn thing. It just wouldn't have been right by himself. He flipped it like a coin and tucked it away again, smiling to himself. The elevator doors opened, and his smile faded.

His legs were very unsteady as he walked down the corridor. He stood outside the apartment door, too scared to move.

I've invaded planets. I've been charged by a herd of macrorexes. I've seen dragons in their natural habitat. I've walked on the planet of the Mordiff. Now knock, you coward.

His fingers rapped lightly on the door.

Roselyn opened it. She'd been crying.

"I'm an idiot," Lawrence blurted. "But I had a lot of time to think. A lot of time. And the one thing I want to do more than anything else in the universe is tell you that I love you."

Several of the children had clasped their hands together as they gazed up at Denise. All of them had fallen silent. They were smiling contentedly.

Denise had about five seconds of peace while the story sank in.

"But what did she say to him?"

"Did they get married?"

"Will they live happily ever after?'

She held up her hands in a plea for quiet "I don't know exactly what happened next Not there, or on Earth. But I'm sure Lawrence and Roselyn must have spent a long and happy time together. At least..."

"What?" Jones demanded, eyes bugging.

"It's just that Lawrence never wanted to get involved. But simply knowing makes you involved. That's what the dragons taught us: knowledge is the only true immortal. And he knew that in twenty years' time the Clichane was going to arrive back on Earth with patternform and the dragons' memories. The human race would change. So there he was on the planet that was his true home, with the girl he loved. And he had the Fool's Errand with him. He had the knowledge to turn Amethi into a paradise and populate it with angels long before Earth had the ability. Poor, dear old Lawrence. I wonder if he could resist the temptation."