"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."