Star Dragon | Page 3

image in the tank ballooned, centered just off
the hot spot where the secondary star's accretion stream splashed into the disk. Accretion
disk, his database labeled it, the way station for gas sucked off the secondary before it
shed enough angular momentum to reach the blazing dwarf. Spiral waves of fire churned
across the surface of the flared disk, and magnetic instabilities erupted like planet-sized
sunspots as they came into focus on the whirlpool of plasma.
Something moved there that was not plasma.
Fisher leaned toward the tank.
The image grew larger. A serpentine form, a sharp dark green against the blaze, rolled in

a spiral along the edge of one of the magnetic eruptions, lazily twisting under great arcs
of violet lightning. Then it turned in a manner that suggested intention. It was alive.
Fisher dug into his breast pocket absent-mindedly, his unwavering gaze fixed on this
amazing thing, and pulled out an ampoule of Forget-Me-Not. He popped the top and
snorted the pink powder. He would chemically etch every detail into his mind.
"We are calling it a star dragon."
Of course they were. The dragon continued to spiral up the flux tube, moving in what
appeared slow motion. The resolution showed little more than form and color (and surely
pseudo-color to cover an extended spectrum at that). There was no real texture or sharp
features. It appeared as if one end might be akin to a head, but no sensory apparatus were
visible. The slow motion . . . "What's the scale?"
"A little more than a kilometer from end to end," a coarse, sultry female voice answered.
Devereaux he presumed, but Fisher didn't spare a glance to confirm.
The brain said, "We believe it is deriving its energy from magnetically confined fusion
rather than simply being a photovore. A biological fusion reactor, with a biosystem
capable of exploiting it, could provide the means for engineering on a stellar scale.
Securing this technology is worth a modest long-term investment."
Fisher caressed the twisting dragon with his gaze. It was a thing that had no right to exist,
an impossibility floating there before him. "It's magnificent."
"It would be the ultimate trophy," came Fang's voice, an icy dagger slicing through the
firelight.
Fisher did break his gaze now and regarded the captain. She looked exactly as before,
from the shiny helmet of her hair to the pursed bow-lips, but the intensity with which she
watched the dragon startled Fisher. He was always surprised when he came across
passion matching his own. These thoughts all in a heartbeat, then he was staring at the
tank again.
"How much data do you have?" Fisher asked.
Devereaux answered, "On the binary, pretty near everything. On the dragon, just this
video of four and a half minutes, from the near-infrared to soft X-rays, at very low
spectral resolution. Those old probes weren't very capable."
Capable enough to discover such a marvel. In the tank, lightning arcs surrounding the
dragon like a nimbus flashed, and the creature rolled into a vortex of turbulence,
vanishing into the disk's photosphere. No trace in the frothing plasma of the lake of fire
marked its passage.
"Play it again," Fisher said, welcoming the old hunger rising within him, unable to resist
its siren's call. The Forget-Me-Not would kick in soon, but he wanted the dragon now.

Responding to his request, the image within the tank shimmered and looped back.
The brain said, "We are sending a ship to SS Cygni, newly christened the Karamojo and
specially equipped for this extreme environment, under Captain Fang's command. Our
forecasts suggest the presence of someone with your background would increase the
chances for success for the mission: study the dragon, learn its biotechnology, and if
possible, return with a specimen."
In his gut, Fisher wanted to go, needed to go. But everything had happened so fast. There
was much to consider. This was a thing that just a few minutes ago seemed impossible. "I
assume you have a detailed offer prepared."
"Of course. We will squirt it to you, along with a timed data worm to protect our
proprietary information. You have a week to respond. On a negative response, all
information on the dragon will be erased. Do you accept these terms?"
Erase his dragon? The worm would nest in his biochip along with the proposal and would
affect his memory of this meeting -- even with the Forget-Me-Not -- using the same
circuits and glands that the chip used to insert data. Such a data worm constituted
standard operating procedure, but sweat broke on his brow. After all of his studies of
alien parasites, he didn't like the notion of a foreign agent in his brain adjusting his
memories, despite their excellent safety record. But what choice did he have?