Captain Lena Fang desperately wanted to cry. She would not do such a thing of course, not in public anyway and not in uniform certainly. Maybe it was her fault. Hadn't she been the one to teach Sam to box, to punch without thinking, as an extension of his will? She had forced him to hide his true self behind a mask, driven him to sabotage, thwarted his desire at every turn. And she had used force when she had tossed him from her quarters after that awful fight, hadn't she? Had he really driven her to it? She wasn't sure. What he had said didn't seem so bad to her now through the filter of time.



Fisher knelt on the deck before her looking like a broken doll. Like a dark projection of her will, stout, muscular Stearn towered over her lover's lanky splayed arms and legs.



Her ex-lover. How could she trust him again? She wanted to find a way, but despair chewed at the edges of her thoughts like a pack of piranhas.



"Dr. Fisher," she began quietly, "Must we lock you up?" This was no military excursion, but as captain she had certain inalienable rights in order to ensure the mission succeeded. All the other crew members had signed away that authority to her before they ever boarded the Karamojo. No captain worth her salt would let anyone on board not ultimately answerable to her.



"No," he said. "I can behave myself."



He suddenly seemed so broken, so sane. She had loved his strength, his passion. Where had that suddenly evaporated to? Just a few more days here, she told herself, get through that and everything can be sorted out on the long voyage home. More than a relationship rode on the immediate future; this was her captaincy. Her life.



If she doped Fisher up and locked him away, and they succeeded in capturing a dragon, there was no problem. If they failed, and his presence would have made a difference, that would be her fault. If he was with them and they failed, well, she would have utilized all the available resources. What it came down to was the bottom line. She said with all the ice she could muster, "Are you going to fuck up again?"



She waited for a glib comeback, some sign of insincerity, but he seemed to give the question the consideration it required. At least he took his time answering, but that could have been a sign of fatigue. She ignored the blood dripping from his ripped face and started counting dragons while waiting for his answer.



"If I have to be part of a team to get the dragon," he finally said, "then I can be part of a team. I thought it would be better if I did everything myself. I was wrong. I'm sorry."



She considered Fisher. He seemed sincere, but she would continue to watch him. This was two strikes. At least two strikes. Best to keep him in the light in front of them, working with them, and limit his responsibility as much as possible. He was with them because he was good, committed to their goal, and could help them.



"Okay," Fang said. "Henderson, why don't you take Sam down to the lab and give him some rest. Maybe put his body back to normal at the same time, clean up that green glow."



"No!" Henderson nearly shrieked. "I mean, why? That body design he's got is safer than straight human. He has some of the same advantages a dragon's got. He can shed heat quickly, move along a magnetic field in freefall, that sort of thing."



"Just do it."



"I really don't think it's necessary," he said quickly.



"Is there something amiss in the biolab, Henderson?"



The giant's face didn't move a millimeter, but it its quality somehow shifted nonetheless. "We're a little low on biomass. Just a little. We're growing it as fast as we can, aren't we Papa? It's just that in this very uncertain time, we should maintain a reserve in the event of an emergency. A medical emergency for instance. That is a wise policy, in my opinion."



Fang eyed the giant, slowing raking her gaze over every centimeter of his gargantuaness. There was a waste of biomass. He had seemed so smug and sure of himself on the trip out that Fang had stopped worrying much about him. After all, his job wasn't critical. Papa handled the majority of it. She should have a talk with him soon, if there was the chance. But for now she had to accept his judgment. He was the expert, and Papa hadn't overruled him, so... "Okay, but in that case put Dr. Fisher to bed and strip off that superfluous skin, if he doesn't need it."



"I don't," Fisher said softly. "I donate my skin to the effort."



"Heads up," Devereaux broke in. "The dragon is doing something."



And indeed it was. What it was doing was not at all clear. The twisting had become more frantic, especially its head, which shook like a dog shook a rag. The endless spiraling continued, but had tightened considerably.



Well, here was her chance to test Fisher, and she knew she had to do it. "Henderson, please take Dr. Fisher on down to the lab."



Fisher had managed to stand, and was staring at the dragon. It took him a moment to react when the giant placed his hand on the exobiologist's shoulder. "Now?"



Fang stared at him, waiting.



He went quietly, although he did look back longingly all the way to the portal, his face half ripped away and blood dripping down like tears across the green sea of his visage.



But he went.



Fang let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. Now maybe we can figure out what's going on and bag this dragon, she thought.

Chapter 14

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. -- Arnold H. Glasow

Fisher leaves for his cabin to sleep. The dragon passes through its fit, returns to placidity, then has two more fits before Fisher returns to the bridge ten hours later. Papa remembers a false memory of a snake struggling to shed its skin, eyes milky white, scraping its head against rocks. He recalls another false memory of a crab shedding its shell, in order that it might grow larger.

Over the next two days the dragon's pattern repeats. The rest of the crew, including daughter, take their turns resting, watching, waiting. Outside the dragon churns plasma, and the white dwarf drinks gas from the secondary star.

Papa watches it all, and thinks of three and a half million other topics. He does not sleep, of course.

He records the increasing bursts of radio emission and tries to determine their pattern, if any, applies decompression and decryption techniques, and analyzes the output for more patterns. He deploys the shuttles as scouts to other parts of the disk, monitoring flow rates, viscosity, and magnetic fields. A few he sends to the secondary star.

Daughter sits with Fisher and together they watch the dragon. She skips the gym, but her need for exercise drives her to excessive electrostim. She refuses to bodmod the muscles like Stearn, and Papa admires that about her. Fisher drinks copious amounts of coffee and stays inordinately alert, but takes a few hours for sleep when she asks him to.



Devereaux and Stearn continue to play war games with each other under his supervision, getting regular refinements to the dragon simulation from Fisher. They get good, and their templates make him even better.



Henderson plays nursemaid in his lab, nudging along the growth of four varieties of undifferentiated cell stock. He skims off an acceptable loss, employing it in his own form for purposes hidden to Papa's conscious mind by a prickly toxinwall.



One puzzle unravels itself, but it begets another in turn. The culprit driving the moving target of the dwarf nova detonation in Devereaux's models is the mass spillage from the secondary. The mass transfer rate has increased beyond expected levels, but Devereaux has invested less time in understanding the star in deference to the disk. Perhaps this has been a mistake. Stars are more complex than given credit for, and, worse in this case, the inner Lagrangian point where spillover transpires is a point of unstable equilibrium. Variations in the star can be amplified here, or not, according to chaotic dynamics. So the new puzzle is, what drives the flow into the disk? And are the mysterious radio signals associated with this new phenomenon?



Papa's Bayesian probability analysis implies a strong likelihood of correlation.



He does not like it.



He argues with daughter to move forward, and wishes that the Biolathe brain had granted him more authority. He cannot overrule Fang on such long timescale strategic decisions without cause. The best he can do is question her motives. "But why not now, daughter?"



She frowns, apparently unhappy with me trying to point out the illogical nature of her hesitation. "My grandfather tried to teach me about being Chinese. Not the history garbage, and not the superstitious claptrap. He believed that while the rise of technology had shattered much of western values, there were eastern traditions that one would always be able to rely upon. One of these was yun, for fate, or revolution if you translate the word directly. He would say to me, 'When yun withdraws, yellow gold loses its color; but when the right times comes, even iron shines in splendor.'"



"Ancient Chinese proverbs were not written to apply to star dragons, daughter."



"That's right. They apply to life in general and everything in it. If we choose the right action, but choose the wrong time, all of our effort will come to ruin. If we choose the proper time, then the trophy is ours to take."



"And how do you choose this time? Tell me, and we will calculate it."



"All I know is that the time isn't yet ripe." And damn her if she does not break her mask to smile a mysterious smile.



Trying to be human, Papa decides, isn't as difficult as working with humans.