"Fight it," warned Skellor, "and it will cause you increasing pain until it kills you. Now, come with me."

They followed.

After collecting a meal and a small bottle of wine from his room's dispenser, Cormac sat down to enjoy them while the room's screen displayed an image of Dragon before him. First pouring out a glass of wine, he then peeled back the meal's wrapper and stared for a moment at what might laughingly be described as a roast dinner, then took up a fork and started stabbing at the odd item of food.

Gant's suggestion that they should put a missile into the creature was perfectly understandable, but how perfect a situation they could manufacture instead by having Dragon attack the Masadan laser arrays. Now having accessed the files transmitted by ECS, Cormac had more of a grasp of what was going on there. There was a special neatness about using Dragon, because of the Theocracy's claim that they were building the launcher to protect themselves from this creature. Cormac was not entirely sure what agreements had been broken, but he very much suspected the Masadans of being terrified of Polity subsumption, and of gaining what allies they could — those including both Separatist groups and Dragon. With their arrays being attacked, the Occam Razor would of course have to go and assist the Masadans — after a suitable delay — and then… Then perhaps ECS could learn, very loudly, of the oppression of Masada's surface populace and their wish to become part of the Polity.

"Show me the Masadan solar system," he said.

The screen changed to show him precisely what he had requested: Masada itself orbiting within the so-called green belt which supposedly made it habitable for humans. Not very much further out from it orbited a gas giant named Calypse that must loom large in its sky. Numerous moons surrounded both planet and giant in complex intersecting orbits. All these bodies were numbered, but he doubted very much if the Masadans used such numbers; for them no doubt the moons had names out of some religious work.

"Give me the Masadan names for those moons," he therefore instructed.

The submind he was dealing with was prompt in its reply, though it gave no verbal response. Down the side of the same display, it now showed him each of the numbers with a name and a brief description. Cormac snorted with surprise as he read through it.

Around Masada itself orbited two moons, Thorn and Lok, both indistinguishable from each other in their irregularity of shape and complex orbits. The last of these were sent into different sequences on each close pass of Calypse's moons, of which four were named:

Amok was small and irregular; the severed testicles of some titan spiralling round the gas giant Calypse. Dante was the largest moon, and the one closest to the giant. It was a sulphurous hell with volcanic activity continually encouraged by the wrenching tides of the giant and its close passes of Masada. Torch was a ball of ice with a slight cometary tail when it was at perihelion; this was due to the flaring of complex ices lighting a tail of ice crystals when tidal forces heated the moon. At aphelion the moon cooled enough for the ices to stop flaring. This was a common phenomenon in comets, but not often seen in moons. Flint was cratered, near geologically dead, and furthest out from Calypse, but was hence the giant's moon that passed closest to Masada on the sunward side of its orbit. It was the kind of moon on which the Polity normally established runcible facilities, but here instead was the base for a shipyard — frameworks and buildings stretching out into space from its surface.

This entire system of moons was named — so the screen notes informed Cormac — by their discoverer, one Braemar Padesh. Cormac felt the man must have used some strange random search in their naming process. He was already ruminating on whatever preparations were now being made on Flint, and how costly they might prove in human life, when his door chime sounded. Immediately, in the corner of the screen he was gazing at, a view into the corridor outside flicked up.

"Enter," he said, and the door opened behind him.

"There's something you should know," said Mika, walking quickly into the room and perching herself on the edge of his sofa.

"That is?" he asked, after washing down another mouthful of food with a sip of wine.

"There has been some kind of communication between Scar and Dragon."

"Specifically?"

"Just before the sphere was detected Scar showed… signs of distress, collapsed, then went into convulsions."

"Communication?"

"It seems the most likely explanation. I would conjecture some kind of link."

"Why that conjecture?"

"Because dracomen are tough and as far as I can tell there is very little that can cause them distress; because Dragon is here and it has happened now," she replied.

He studied her for a long moment and wondered if she had bothered to ask Scar what had happened to him.

"Where is Scar right now?" he asked.

"With the Golem — Gant." Cormac noted she had no problem describing Gant as such. "They've got to put your prisoners into cold-sleep. Apparently there are communication problems."

Cormac raised an eyebrow, then turned towards his screen. "AI, can you establish a communications link for me with the dracoman, Scar?"

"Drone present," grated the voice of the submind of Occam's he had been using. Immediately the view on the screen changed to show internal structures of the ship swinging past, and finally it drew to a halt on Scar walking along a gangway beside Gant.

"Scar, does Dragon speak to you?" Cormac asked.

Still moving, Scar lifted his head and gazed at the drone that had to be hovering only a couple of metres in front of him, blinked, showed his teeth, but said nothing. Cormac snorted in annoyance: just like his creator — keeping his cards close to his chest.

"Scar, I want you to return here now. You'll join me in the bridge pod when Tomalon is ready, understood?"

Scar gave a sharp nod and halted. Cormac's last view was of Gant slapping the dracoman once on the shoulder, as Scar turned to head back.

"You hope to learn something," Mika stated, clearly uncomfortable with this near-question.

"I like to keep potential dangers close, where I can watch them, and if necessary, deal with them quickly," Cormac replied, spearing a carrot.

Cormac, Scar and Tomalon stood in the retracted bridge pod and watched as ten grabships approached Dragon. Every now and again Cormac glanced at the dracoman. Only when he was turning back to see the first of the grabships positioning itself against the surface of Dragon did he see some sign of what Mika had reported. Scar flinched — then flinched again as the second ship took position. He bared his teeth as the third moved in.

"You can feel it," Cormac said.

Scar nodded.

"What do you feel?"

"Pain."

"As do we all. I thought you could blank it out."

Silence.

"It's not just the pain, is it?"

"It tries to control me."

"Will it succeed?"

"No. But I will."

Succeed at what?

Cormac was about to voice this question when a change in Scar's expression alerted him to something happening on the screen. He instantly looked up. All the grabships were now in position, most of them out of sight from their point of view, and scalpels of fire were probing the night. Dragon was being pushed towards the Occam Razor.

"How will you secure it to the ship?" he asked Tomalon.

"It will secure itself with its pseudopods."

"Any problems?"

"None that are insurmountable. A portion of its body will remain outside U-field, but it informs me that it intends to position itself so as that portion will be part of the radioactive area. That portion will then be left here — cut away."