Stearn had let her off the hook, Sylvia realized, when he had admitted that there were a broad range of seductions possible. That thought eased her trepidation as she approached Fisher's cabin for the second time in as many days. Recently once a week at dragon meetings was the norm -- she had no idea when he ate and wondered if in fact he did eat. She took a deep breath and derailed that thought train. All she had to do really was get him to talk to her as one human being to another, make that connection.



This time she got to ring the chime.



Sylvia adjusted her scarlet silk wrap, then tucked her hands under her arms as she waited. An awkward fish schlepped along the floor, its lime coloration contrasting the beige of the ruglings. Around the bend of the ring, a six-toed cat silently stalked the sick fish.



There was no answer.



"Papa, is Fisher in his cabin?"



"Yes."



She waited, but Papa offered no explanation. He was usually more helpful to her. "Is he asleep?"



"No."



Sylvia untucked her arms and rang the chime three times in rapid succession.



The door irised open -- another glimpse into the kiln. "What is it? I'm working."



Sylvia's pupils contracted and her corneas darkened to enhance the contrast. Fisher was a dim gray-green smudge silhouetted against the fire crackling everywhere in his cabin. How could he stand it? How could he work in this inferno? "I wanted to talk to you, Sam."



"So talk. I've got a lot to do."



She could see him better now, see his tiny pink eyes staring back at her from a green mask. If only this weren't so important. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and said, "In your cabin?"



He laughed, a tinny nervous sound, as if he hadn't laughed in a long time and his mouth had forgotten how. "My cabin? Are you kidding me?"



"Can't you -- " she groped for a word, and threw her hands up with a suddenness that surprised her, grimaced, continued, "Can't you just turn that off, and be a human being for a few minutes?"



He said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded, and turned his back to Sylvia. The fire swallowed Fisher.



Sylvia waited.



Inside, the fire surged, then died. Not completely, she saw, but only in the half of the room near the door, and in a narrow path to the bathroom and to the bedbeast -- a hard, obsidian creature that reflected darkly the low flames that flickered like smoldering ruglings.



"Come in," Fisher said.



Sylvia stepped across the threshold, hot already, and wiped sweat from her brow. "You live like this?"



"Of course," said Fisher, sitting in a lotus-position hovering just above the flames in the rear of the room. More of the magnetic levitation trick. "I have adapted myself to this environment so as to understand how a star dragon might live, how these surroundings might influence the mind of such a fantastic creature, and what sort of things that mind might think."



That struck her as clever but she decided not to acknoweldge that fact. "You still think the star dragon could be sentient?"



Fisher shrugged, a motion that induced a spiraling bob that only slowly damped out. "Anything is possible. If they are sentient, bombing their home would be an unethical, perhaps criminal act, would it not?"



Sylvia took two more steps into the room and stopped two meters from the fire. "Of course I agree."



"Then tell her!" His green glow flared.



"Easy, Sam. I will. I'm running every analysis I can think of on the probe data. I don't see anything except perhaps some signs of that laser transition, but it isn't very secure. We're having one more dragon meeting before we achieve the disk, right? Make your case there, with logic. Make a compelling argument, and I'm sure the captain will listen."



"I have been making an argument for months now. She won't listen." Fisher leaned forward, maintaining his hovering Buddha pose, and gesturing with a finger pointed above Sylvia's head. "She wants to take a trophy, fire off her bombs, play the big hunter. She doesn't care about our scientific goals. This is a grand vacation for her. A vacation!"



Sylvia stepped forward, closer to the fire. She felt her skin harden to the heat, rapidly tanning of its own volition. "Like all of us Captain Fang has made a sacrifice to come on this journey. She has her career at stake. She will make the effort to be careful with the ship, but she has the mission's goals at heart. She wants to succeed, just as do you."



"Ha!" Fisher floated closer, leaning forward at a forty-five degree angle. Less than a meter separated his face from hers. "She wants to sabotage me."



"I don't think so." Sylvia dry swallowed, her lips cracking open afterward, a tiny sound consumed by the popping flames. Stearn would probably expect her to dart in for a kiss at this point. She leaned forward, slightly, as if considering it. That was as physically intimate as she was going to get -- there was no connection there but for the dragon issue. "Look, just give the meeting a chance. Give Fang a chance. Give the mission a chance."



"I have given the mission everything I have."



"Just don't do anything rash."



"I will do anything necessary."



He was so far away. She could do more. Sylvia lifted her hand toward the heat, toward Fisher's cheek.



He didn't move.



She flinched when a flame flickered up Fisher's gray-suited body to lick her hand, but it was brief and didn't burn. Her fingers glowed green in the light of Fisher's face as they brushed his skin. After her last experience with Fisher's current set of bodmods, she expected a spark, or crackle, or something spectacular. All she felt was soft cool skin, without a hint of beard. It was like baby skin.



He still didn't move.



"What made you like this, Sam?"



At her words, he pulled back from her touch. "Oh, it's simple biophysics really. I had Henderson help me put it together in a few hours. The key is eliminating the sweat glands in favor of bioelectic light-emitting diodes, adding a charged circulatory system, and the rest follows from there integrating the systems."



"That's not what I meant and you know it."



"Nothing made me like this."



"Really?" Sylvia challenged. "It was the twenty-seventh century when we left Earth, and it'll be the thiry-first when we get home. We can alter our bodies as to suit our whims, as you've done. While mental alteration isn't as yet so safe or easy, there are a multitude of methods of regulating a personality from special hormone-regulating glands to oral drugs to gene therapy. We choose who we want to be. Why did you choose this, Sam?"



Fisher bobbed in his fire, green on red, and said nothing for a long moment. Then, finally, when Sylvia was about ready to back out of the heat and leave him his stupid privacy, he said, "Okay then. You want a story?"



Sylvia nodded, after a moment, her hair sticking to her sweaty cheeks.



"Have you heard of the space wisps?"



She shook her head. "I know I should have uploaded the whole exobiology bestiary when I signed on for this mission, but I figured you and Papa would have that covered and I'd focus on the properties of cataclysmic variables and SS Cygni in particular."



He nodded and began talking. "Basically they're space-faring life built of networks of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons originating in star-forming molecular clouds. They're tenuous enough -- wisp is a good name. Not much more to look at than a bundle of threads resembling a smoke cloud. The ionizing ultraviolet that spurred their development and provides them energy also photodissociates them, and they play a game of Scylla and Charbydis with their environment. Too much ionizing flux and they break apart and die. Not enough, and they have no energy."



"They sound interesting," she said truthfully. Fisher seemed much better now than he had in months, talking about something he loved and wasn't fighting for. "Although I'm not sure how you'd tell they're even alive."



"That was tough. They were discovered by accident when a relativistic probe smacked into a pack of them in the vicinity of Sirius B. Near lightspeed, a pack of wisps can hit like a mountain, and this was a small, low-budget scientific probe without active shielding. Anyway, they were first deemed nothing more than an interesting example of Galactic chemistry. That's where I came in. I discovered three features that suggested they were truly alive. First, they could reproduce in a way very similar to DNA, slowly, to be sure, as they accumulated building materials from cosmic dust, but the evidence was clear from the observed population. Second, they could alter their reflective structure and guide their motions via a form of solar sailing, using radiation pressure and the shape of their sail and their angular momentum to keep them on that thin line between the dark and the destruction."



"The third feature?"



"When the photodissociated bonds reformed, it wasn't random. Even the ones not actively replicating took the opportunity to build structures, such as their tiny sails, but sometimes the sailing structure was not built at an angle that made sense. That's what confused the first researchers. But then I realized that they were flashing infrared light signals to their neighbors. The whole pack -- there were hundreds certainly, but possibly hundreds of thousands in the complete extended population, were communicating. I have no idea how intelligent the wisps were, but something was going on there."



"Why aren't you still studying the wisps?"



"All the ones we know about were destroyed. After the unusual chemistry was documented and all the data collected that I analyzed, the science team studying Sirius B swept the area with fully ionizing Xenon-Chloride excimer lasers and vaporized all the debris -- including the wisps -- to clear the path for their probes. I was already on a ship, without the high gamma like this one has, bound for Sirius. When I arrived, there was nothing to study. When I returned to Earth, twenty-two years had passed. I only lost fifteen. My mother had died in a diving accident on Europa during that span."



Sylvia didn't know how to respond. Finally she picked, "I'm sorry."



Fisher's green flared to rival his floor. "Don't ever be sorry for me! I learn from my mistakes, and when it is within my power, I make sure they are never duplicated. This mission is my life, for now, for a thousand years, and I am dedicated to its successful completion. I will do whatever I have to do to ensure it."



"Yes, but you have to work with the rest of us. Captain Fang -- "



Fisher held out his hand and cut her off. "Fang is irrelevant here. Do you understand my position?"



"I suppose so, yes."



"Then you'll let me get back to work?"



Was that going it be it? Perhaps it was, and perhaps it was enough. "Yes."



Fisher sat in the fire, staring at her, waiting.



She ventured a little more. "If you need to talk?"



"I'm fine," insisted Fisher. "You just concern yourself with making the mission a success, and we'll get along fine. The same goes for Fang. Now, please excuse yourself, and we'll all go back to work."



I tried Phil, she thought. I did better than I thought I might, and it wasn't even so bad. She had collected a few more of Fisher's puzzle pieces, and even saw how a few fit together. She wondered how Phil was doing with the aloof and intractable captain.



Sylvia said, "Thanks for talking, Sam."



Fisher smiled. "Thank you."



Sylvia exited the cabin, flames crawling behind her steps to again fill the room with their righteous, intense heat. The kiln door closed.

Chapter 7

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men. -- Emile Zola

Fang ducked under the boxing mobile's swing and hit it in the body three times, hard, before dancing back. It swung again. Fang stepped backwards and to the side, and tagged its head which snapped like a tree bulldozed by an avalanche.

She had told herself a thousand times that she was better off without Fisher, but he'd made a better sparring partner than these damn mobiles. Maybe she should have gone on that safari with the Jack after all. At least it wouldn't have been the same old thing.

Someone rang Captain Fang's personal chime twice in quick succession. That was odd, she thought. Why not simply have Papa pipe voice to her?

The gym door irised open revealing a breathless Phil Stearn, eyes wide, all white and black. He said, through heavy panting, "Captain, come quick," and took a step with a half-turn away, gesturing with his free hand for her to follow. In his other hand he energetically waved about a large-caliber rifle.



She kept herself from instinctually grimacing at his lack of respect for firearms. Just because they were ancient didn't mean to not treat them properly. "What is it Stearn? And why are you armed?"



"I've got a wounded lion, now please come on!"



He took another two steps down the corridor and gestured again. After a brief hesitation, she followed, telling the clasps of her gloves to release. They dropped to the canvas and she followed her Jack out of the gym.



"Explain yourself, Mr. Stearn."



"Well, it's like this, see." He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "I decided to go ahead hunting without you, on the savanna."



"Real or virtual?"



"That's the thing, see. I wanted to make it interesting, so I asked Papa to surprise me with a safari of his own invention. I'm pretty sure it's real. And he won't stop the game unless I'm in physical danger. The way this body's built, well, it can take a lot of damage without seriously endangering my life. Papa won't let me evacuate the chamber, but I don't want to go after that lion. You want to get chewed up by a real lion?"



"Of course the lion is real," Fang said. "Papa doesn't like you."



"I know, I know, and this doesn't have the parameters for an override, and I don't want them to get there either. Papa can get a little scary, you know. But you're Captain. You could override, terminate the simulation."



"No." He made her want to frown. This was her crew? Not finishing a hunt, not respecting the life he had created and the resources he had consumed? She should set an example. "That isn't necessary. If you're willing to shoot yourself into trouble, you'd better be willing to shoot yourself out. I'll help."



"Then let's go." Stearn picked his pace up to a jog.



Fang matched him.



They reached the savanna soon enough. Her pulse elevated, a warm radiation from a blushed face, and the start of a light sweat...this was much better than beating up a mobile or sitting around the cabin waiting for the dragon meeting where Fisher would twist her words to suit his own purposes. He didn't understand that this was an alien thing that could kill them, that they had to test their mettle against it assuming it to be a creature of infinite grace and power. Twisting words was not a good way to meet an unknown challenge.



The door opened. Fang stepped inside. "Give me your rifle."



"Happily, Captain. It's loaded."



"Better be." Fang surveyed the grassy plain, sliced in two by a stream and sporting a few scattered trees, squinting her eyes despite her corneas' auto-darkening. A blistering day on this world inside the ship, the air still and heavy. "Tell me what happened."



"Well," said Stearn, "I shot him twice. Once in the leg, once somewhere forward. I lost him in the tall grass."



"How long ago?" asked Fang.



His eyes flickered, checking his internal clock. "Nineteen minutes, seven seconds."



"Long enough. You didn't kill him, or Papa would have let you know. He should be sick by now, his adrenaline faded, the pain...overwhelming. It's a damn thing, getting shot."



"Never tried it, but properly applied pain can inspire a great endorphin rush -- "



"That's enough, Stearn." Fang regarded the savanna more closely. "This is a bad place."



"Why is it bad?"



"Can't see him until you're on him."



"Oh," said Stearn. "I see."



"You can stay here, if you like. I'll have to go in after him." She checked her weapon, a double-barreled .505, an old vintage capable of only two of shots before requiring reloading. At least Stearn had some fortitude. He could have brought in a mega gun and shredded the entire chamber in seconds. The chamber, prepped for hunting, was equipped to withstand as much.



"I thought about burning the lion out. That was done in ancient times and would be sporting."



"The grass is too green. You might as well laser the whole damn thing." The chamber was equipped for that. Papa had high-powered lasers available as safety overrides. He could and would use them to kill the lion in an instant if there was an immanent threat to their lives, but knowing Papa, he would let them get a little hurt first. "Lasers would not be fair. You did start the game."



"I'm allowed to conjure beaters," said Stearn. "I mean, I'll come with you, but can't we send beaters out ahead? I'd really like to avoid the lion mauling my equipment, if you know what I mean."



Beaters...this started to bother her more. How different, she thought, would it be sending beaters into the savanna to flush out the lion from sending her missiles into the disk to flush out the dragon? She had been on many hunts, but this scenario gave her more than the usual deja vu. "Of course we can. But it's a touch murderous. I know the conjured beaters aren't real, but respect the lion, and play this for real. That's the fun of it, the test."



"What do you mean?"



"We know the lion's wounded. You can drive an unwounded lion -- he'll run on ahead of noise. A wounded lion will hide until you're right on top of him. He might as well be invisible. Then he'll charge at point-blank range. A beater would get killed. It's not playing fair."



"Fine then. Lead on, bwana."



Fang frowned at the term. "I don't think that term means quite what you think it means." She set aside the distraction to focus on the task at hand, and signaled Stearn to follow with a twitch of her head.



They walked down a steep bank of an empty streambed, and across, then up the other side. It was true physical exertion, honest exercise.



"Here," Fang said kneeling where the short grass had been splattered with blood. "You hit it here."



"I don't want to go in there. That lion's big."



"I know," Fang said, standing. "It really can't kill us very easily the way our bodies are built, also with Papa ready to cut in at an instant. Still, we live with racial memories burned into us by twenty thousand generations on savannas like this one, the ones that made primates afraid of big cats." She considered telling Stearn that she was afraid, too, but that would have been a lie and might even come to undermine her leadership. No, outside of her cabin, she had to be a rock, would be a rock, as ever. But a hunt, this was what life was made of, if that life was being lived properly. "You can wait here."



"I've changed my mind. I mean, I thought it was fun before. I'd seen you do it. But now, this close. Why don't we just quit?"



"Stearn, you're shameful. You know that? You get Papa to grow a damn lion for you, you shoot it, then you'd just walk away while it suffers? You finish what you start if you're crew on my ship. If you deserve to be called human. I'll have no quitters, understand?" Fang tried to keep her voice even and matter-of-fact, her face hard, but some sneer escaped, she knew.



"You're right, Captain. I'm sorry. If you're going to go, I want to go."



"Good man. It's my show. Do exactly what I tell you."



Fang wondered at Stearn. He seemed to be acting a little odd, inconsistent, like he had some sort of unknown agenda that he was trying to stick to despite her. His tone, his body language, didn't match up well with his words, she decided. Like he was following a script. Still there was the lion. Time to put Stearn out of her mind and deal with the beast.



Somewhere ahead of them there was a wounded lion lying flattened on the ground, invisible in the grass. It would be big and yellow, bloody foam on its muzzle, with each breath pain in its belly coming and going like waves on a beach. It would have hate in its heart, hate in its damn eyes, which surely watched them even at this very moment, its animal instincts holding it stiffly in place awaiting that one moment when it would charge the humans who left the savanna so long ago, but dared to return toting guns that belched death. Yes, Fang knew the look those eyes would have as the muscles stiffened with pain and anticipation. She could understand those eyes. Mammalian eyes, Earthborn eyes.



Check the blood, watch the grass, step forward, check the blood, watch the grass, watch the grass, watch the grass...



"Why don't we -- " Stearn began before Fang stopped listening.



Ignore the damn Jack, watch the grass, step forward.



Then came the blood-choked cough and springing up from nowhere the beast charging down on her.



Fang pointed the double-barreled rifle. Carawong! Carawong!



She managed to keep her stance against the fierce recoil, but had to lean into it. It was impressive, visceral, this ancient technology. She punched the animal with it.



Two shots carrying two tons of force smashed into the beast's face, halting its charge dead on. Yet the beast crawled on, somehow, half its head gone, still trying to kill Fang. This was life before her, relentless, irresistible life, pressing on against what it knew not. Following its instincts, not giving up. The lion's serpentine tail twitched as its mutilated head slumped forward.



The star dragon was alive, and would resist them with every bit as much effort. They would have to match its relentlessness.



Fang said, "It's a damn good lion, Mr. Stearn."



She heard a strangling noise, and, when she was sure that the lion's crawl truly had ceased, turned to regard her vomiting Jack.



He managed to speak. "I'm sorry, Captain, it's just -- "



Fang handed the rifle to Stearn and walked past him. She said, "Have some respect for such an excellent creature. You bring life into this world for your pleasure, make sure you respect it."



Grimy and smelling of gunpowder, she left the sphere to shower and change. It would soon be time for the damn dragon meeting, and she had to think about her plan of attack.