Allied with the biggest creatures in space, they were the rich harvesters. Now they would be the hunted as well...

One: 3048 AD

Operation Dragon, Carson's

In that frenetic, quick-shift, go, drop-your-friends-possessions-roots-loyalties like throw-away containers age, heroes, legends, archetypal figures, and values as well, were disposable. They were as brilliant and ephemeral as the butterflies of Old Earth. One day someone on the marches of science might burst the pale and wrest from Nature a golden, universe-rocking secret. A bold naval officer might shatter the moment's enemy. Either could be a hero, a legend for a fleeting hour. And then he would become one with the dust of Sumer and Akkad.

Who remembered on the seventh day?

Who remembered Jupp von Drachau's raid in the Hell Stars? Mention his name. Blank stares would turn your way. Or someone would say, assuming memory, "He's too old," meaning too long gone. Von Drachau had been relegated to the historical toy box with the Caesars, Bonapartes, and Hitlers. Half a year, Confederation standard, had passed. The Now People had abandoned him. The yesterday people, the Archaicists, would not pick him up for a hundred years.

Luckily, benRabi thought, Jupp did not need the adulation.

The Now People, the down-planet people, who rode the screaming rockets of technological and social change, bought their values plastic-packed, to be disposed when their usefulness was done. BenRabi found no satisfaction in that. He could hold on to nothing long enough to wear the rough edges off, to make it comfortable with time, like an old couch after years of use.

He thought those things as, toolcase in hand, he wandered toward the gate of Carson's Blake City spaceport. The name he wore felt a size too small, yet it could become a burden heavier than the cross the Christian god had borne.

He was going to hate this. He loathed pipes and plumbing.

He wore a union-prescribed commercial spacer Liquids Transfer Systems Technician's uniform. It consisted of tight, dull grey coveralls with green and yellow piping. His sleeves boasted three red hashmarks where Servicemen wore chevrons. They indicated that his union rated him a Master.

He did have the training, though his acquisition of it lay nearly forgotten amid that of countless exotic skills.

His teaching-couch days seemed part of another age. Still in his thirties, he felt the weight of a thousand years. Lifetimes worth of knowledge had been pressure-injected into his skull. And the education would never end.

The Bureau was his surrogate mother, father, and wife. It insisted he be ready for anything. Just in case.

The Bureau was a family without love. It left him with dissatisfactions that could easily grow into hatreds. The things they did to him...

They never justified. They never explained.

But lately he had been dissatisfied with everything. The image of the gun had become merciless. He had developed a crying socket of soul-need into which nothing seemed to fit.

And there were the aches and pains.

He hurt.

Within him he bore a second set of nerves. They had implanted a complete instel radio powered by bio-electricity. A small, dying pain surrounded a knot behind his left ear. That was the largest lump of the radio.

He had other pains. His ulcer. A little finger he had bruised playing handball. A hint of the headache that had been with him most of his life.

Each slow step drove spikes of agony up the bones of his legs. They had been lengthened six centimeters, hastily. His arm bones felt no better. The skin on his stomach itched where they had trimmed off twenty pounds.

His fingers, toes, and eyes itched too. His fingerprints, toeprints, and retinal patterns had been too quickly changed.

Carson's was as back of beyond a world as he had ever seen.

The damned ulcer... The fast-push to Carson's had reawakened it. It was a hurry-up job from the go.

But, then, they all were. How long had it been since he had had time to catch his breath, to relax, play with his collections, or just loaf around that house he owned, unshared, on the quiet government retirement planet called Refuge? Or to tinker with his literary opus, All Who Were Before Me in Jerusalem?

There was no time to loaf. Nor to plan operations in advance. In a rush of maddening changes, civilization seemed to be hurtling toward an apocalyptic crisis. Nothing was permanent. There were no fixed points on which to anchor.

Moyshe benRabi's life had become like the flash floods of Sierran rivers in Thaw Time, roaring and cascading past too swiftly, too liquidly, for any part to be seized and intimately known.

But wait! In the river of life apassing there were a few solid rocks. They were the long-lived legends lying heavy on his mind. Like the boulders in the turbulence, they had endured a forever compared to anything else of his age.

Something was missing: fixtures, solids, foundations for his life. There had to be something for him, something real... I want, he cried to the corners of his soul. And here came the image of the gun, that sprang to mind at the oddest time. Bow, howitzer, rifle, pistol, whatever, always unmanned, usually in profile and firing. What did it mean? A goal? Some sexual symbol? An expression of his sometime want for heroism? A sign of a secret urge to kill?

Memories returned, of the day he had entered Academy. He had been nervous and polished and proud to be part of Navy, proud to be one of the rare Old Earth appointees, and scared they would hold that against him. A bee of uncertainty had buzzed his butter soul even then. He had taken his oath with private reservations. He had devoted a quarter of his short life to winning the appointment, and success had left him with the feeling that something was missing. But Navy had seemed to promise what his want demanded.

The Academy years had not been bad. Hard work, hard play, not much time for introspection. But the first few months of line service had brought the hurt back stronger than ever. Casting about desperately, he had put in for intelligence training without understanding his own motivation. He had told his wardroom acquaintances that he wanted more adventure.

Even then his words had rung false. There was adventure enough in the line hunting Sangaree and McGraws.

All of which had come to a head in the now, with Moyshe benRabi, a flying knight, being sent to find a dragon hiding behind the eyes of the night.

Ahead, he spotted his small, brown, Oriental, Manchu-mustached partner, Mouse. Making no sign, he entered the gate behind the man.

He slowed momentarily, staring across the field. The lighter from the raggedy-assed Freehauler that had brought them in from Blackworld was still on the ground. It should have lifted last night. They had caught the Freehauler at the end of a fast-shuffle through a procession of ships designed to cover their backtrail.