The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 61 —

Simon Tregesser's Voyager had been running flat out, well into the red, for nineteen days. It was seven days ahead of the schedule Provik had posited for the run to the G. Witica—S. Satyrfaelia strand.

Tregesser's crew thought him mad. Nobody pushed a ship so hard so long. It was a miracle the Q had not gone.

Simon was no more confident than they, but he was riding a nightmare hunch that if he did not get to that strand fast, he was a dead man. He had no idea why. But he trusted his hunches. They had done him right before.

They would be coming up on the strand soon. He had them feeling for it now. He wondered how Lupo was doing. He had not seen Provik since the run began. He had stopped trying to communicate.

Maybe Lupo hadn't gotten out. That would be hell. How would he manage without him? Lupo had been his rock forever.

Simon was on the operating bridge, filling half with his bell, when the Guardship broke off the Web. Right there. In his lap. Six light years from anywhere.

"Aw, shit," he said without any force. "One more signal to Provik. Warn him off." He analyzed the Guardship's motion vectors and ordered a turn that offered a chance to reach the strand before the Voyager could be destroyed.

He would not be taken, that he determined.

Provik remained amazed. "Simon is going to complete the run a week fast. Or kill himself trying."

None of his family were comfortable running in the red, though his Voyager was more suited to it than was Tregesser's and there were enough of them to close-monitor the Q.

"He should be getting close." Simon's Voyager remained at the very edge of detection.

"Message coming in."

Guardship. Right in Simon's lap. Motion vectors thus and so. He was turning so. Fifty-fifty chance of outrunning death and getting onto the Web.

"Damn! Decision time."

Tension filled the bridge. Suddenly they were all there, all offering to share the pain, wondering if he could do what, for nineteen days, they had been deliberating.

Lupo stared at the comm board. The tight beam was locked onto Simon's Voyager. The code sequence was in. The circuit was armed. The machinery was ready. Was the man?

Could he kill Simon Tregesser?

He could. But could he live with Lupo Provik afterward?

"Damn it!" His hand stabbed. "Turn us into the Guardship's vectors and shut everything down."

He sat down and cried.

Shedding their own tears, his family began trying to make the Voyager invisible by reducing its emissions.