As the door closed, Fang's cheeks tightened into an involuntary smile. Fisher no longer seemed a wild element. With a united crew, she was sure she could face the dragons again and triumph.



"Evening lights." Fang walked to her bed, sat down on its edge, and pulled off her boots. The plush carpeting tickled her hot toes as she stretched her out her legs. The rest of her uniform followed the boots and she donned a pink satin robe that felt good against her skin.



She considered opening a bottle of wine, but Henderson probably would not be able to produce much more very quickly, and she didn't want to drink alone. Outside her French doors, the moon shone over a placid sea, and a slow breeze made the curtains shiver. She stepped outside onto her wooden deck, sans drink.



A lover's moon, she thought, frowning. "Papa?"



"Yes, daughter," answered the familiar, gruff voice.



"How are you?" she asked.



"Better," he said, sounding tired. "Still not myself."



"Me too," she said.



"You need a man," Papa offered.



Fang shook her head, slowly, smiling. "Like hell I do," she said, thinking of Fisher.



"A real man," Papa persisted.



Already cool, goose pimples rose on her bare arms and legs with the wind. "Turn up the temperature a few degrees, will you?"



"Of course," said Papa obediently.



Looking out onto the virtual sea, smooth to infinity, she decided she might want the wine after all. "Where's Fisher?"



"Outside your cabin, sitting opposite the door."



She smiled, shaking her head. It was too good to be true.

After another ten minutes, she asked, "He still there?"

"Yes, daughter."

She licked her lips. "Let him in, and tell him to pour two glasses of one of the reds. Make sure he lets it breathe for a few minutes, right?"

"Of course."



Fang seated herself on a canvas chair and levered her legs up against the high gravity and settled them, uncrossed, onto the deck rail. Her robe slid up her thighs, but she didn't bother to push it back. She tried not to look, but couldn't help herself, as Fisher's green scintillations flickered inside.

Apparently he was doing just as requested.

The moon shimmered exactly where she wanted it, and she basked in its glow while she waited for Fisher.

She turned when she heard his slippered feet scraping against the wood of the deck. She held out her hand and accepted the proffered glass. She returned her attention to the luminous moon while she sniffed the complex aroma of the wine.

Fisher settled into the other deck chair; she often used it to put her feet on. "Nice night," he said.

"Mmm," she replied as she finished sloshing wine around her mouth. The liquid warmed her throat on its way down.

"Good wine," he said.

Fang wiggled her upper body, shrugging the robe from her shoulders. Bending her head forward and exposing the back of her neck, she said, "Please just shut up, Sam, and make yourself useful. I could really use a good back rub."

When she heard his weight shift from his chair and the clink of his glass bottom on the table, but no words, a shiver crackled along her spine. When his hard fingers sank firmly into her knotted flesh, she darn near purred. He must have downloaded a massage routine into his biochip because he'd never been so good before....

The danger in letting someone else enter your inner sanctum was lack of control, but Fisher was her fantasy tonight, an automaton, a creature bent to her will, and she loved it. No words from him now, no "dragon-this" and "dragon-that," no interrupting her, no far-away expression when she talked to him. Why couldn't he have been this way before?

But then, she admitted, she probably would not have found him attractive.

After an eternity under his attentive fingers, Fang stirred herself. "You're no chairbeast, but you're not bad."

He said nothing.

Lovely. It wasn't all about him and his dragons for once.

Fang rose, said, "Come on, let's do this right," and walked inside. She undid her robe and let the smooth material slide down her body, caressing her all the way down. She crawled onto the bed from the bottom up, lay down, and let herself relax. "Back," she mumbled around her armpit.

Fisher sat on the bed and went to work on her back.

After only eight minutes by her internal clock, she jerked, adrenaline tightening her muscles, sweat breaking over her skin. She had nearly fallen asleep! She didn't trust Fisher that far. But she loved what his fingers were doing -- had been doing -- before she jerked awake. He was being so good to her, giving her what she needed, and not prattling on about his own obsessions. Why hadn't he been like this more often when they'd been together? No one had treated her this well in a long time.

A very long time.

She blinked as her eyes watered. "Sam," she said.

"Yes?" His fingers continued to cast their spell.

"I want to explain what happened on the bridge, with the dragons."

She started to push herself to her elbows, but he pushed her back down. He said, "That's not necessary."

"But it is." She succumbed to his push and let herself settle in for more massage. It would be easier to say the things she wanted to say this way, without eye contact, and for that she was grateful. "You eat, sleep, and breathe star dragon the way I eat, sleep, and breathe the Karamojo. I owe you some explanation."

"If you feel you must. It isn't necessary."

She grunted in dismissal. "I tried to tell you before about the leviathan the night, you know, things went bad between us. This is important to me, important to understand my actions, and you'll listen to it this time, understand?"

"Yes," he said, and nothing more.

Now that it was time to tell it to another human being, she didn't know how to start. Some emotions, some experiences, seemed too big for words. Anything she said would be a lie insofar as the truth was impossible to communicate. Finally, she decided. "I'm not Papa," she began. "I make a good show of it, boxing, hunting, being a strong Captain the way he would be if he could. But when I box, I use finesse rather than strength. The ship's name, which I chose, indicates that. I didn't call the ship the Great White Hunter, or the Amazon, or anything so bold. Karamojo Bell hunted elephants, the great beasts of his era, with a small-bore 7mm Mauser loaded with 175 grain bullets. Trust me, that is small for elephant. He made his kills with only one shot, a testimony to his skill as a marksman. He used knowledge and finesse when he hunted. I aspire to his skill. When I hunt, I have safeguards to prevent injury, so I'm not really proving anything. I have not been tested with threat of death, the only test recognized in nature. I'm a creature of our age. Machines, mechanical or biological, do all the difficult tasks for us. Humans are superfluous in so many ways, but we still run things, choose the direction of civilization, something like an evolutionary grandfather clause. Our creations have only the drives we give them."

Fisher's fingers had slipped into a mechanical pattern, so she assumed he was paying attention to her words. He had rarely allowed her such a long speech without interruption, except when he was working and filtered her out. She diverted that thought -- he had better be listening!

"I've tried to be the type of captain who does things, the way they used to. This mission is really my first chance to prove that I can. But we're just machines, too, with programming as ancient as the Serengeti. We're obsessed with our ability to change our bodies, our hardware, and that shows how obsolete our thinking truly is. The mind will rule the future while we clutch to our ear wings, wasp waists, and quick fists. But I'm talking around my point.

"When I was a little girl, the universe taught me that I was weak, that there were bigger things in it that would and could eat me, and think nothing more of me than how I tasted. I've been trying to grow, literally, ever since then. Grow in muscle, grow in rank, until I became so big I could move entire herds of animals across interstellar space. The disk here holds a few percent of the mass of Earth's moon, big enough for me, a sea five thousand times bigger than the Pacific. Multiply that by two: the disk is double-sided. That has had me thinking about the leviathan that swallowed my grandfather as I watched."

Fang stopped to lick her lips, which had gone bone dry. "When those dragons came at us, with those same unfathomable eyes, I was the weak little girl again. For a moment I could not act: one of them might have noticed, and eaten me. Then I had to act, or I would be just the same as that little girl I once was. I had to. My command would now be over if Papa had seen any clear mandatory course of action, but we knew so little then, still don't know much, so I had wide latitude in my actions. But it felt like failure."

Fisher's fingers continued to slide around her muscles, working out the new tightness that had descended as she had talked. God, had she really talked so long without Fisher interrupting? Was it really possible? Could it have been this good all along? Had she been wrong throwing him out?

Now she desperately wanted him to say something. He had heard her justification, and it was his career -- and life -- that her actions, or lack of actions, threatened. Say something! she thought.

But she was in control now, wasn't she? She could make him say. "Tell me what you think about what I just told you."

Fisher replied, "I understand, and don't blame you for what happened on the bridge. What is important is that we, you, do the right thing next time. I'm here to help you do that, any way I can. Do you understand that?"

She wanted to believe him...or was that his wondrous massage persuading her? Take the political course. "I'm happy to have everyone's support. I'll need it."

She relaxed for good now, her piece said, and no blow-up. This was good and right and easy. After an eternity, she knew she should make Fisher leave.

"Time to get some sleep," she should say. "Go back to your cabin, Sam."

But she couldn't. And didn't.

So Fisher stayed with her, with his magic fingers, and what followed felt even better than what had gone before.