He said, “Show me the energy use logs.” The fairy queen waved her wand, and the information as if by magic appeared as visions in his cerebral cortex, and in specialized receiving cells in his short-term memory. Del Azarchel had used the mind replication and broadcast machinery at the core and spun the singularity disk up to speed. He had pointed the long-range instruments at 41 Cancri, the capital star of the Praesepe Cluster.

Montrose said, “Did Blackie tell you to slow the rotation of the ship?”

“No, sir. But there is sufficient electromagnetic friction to cause appreciable slowing over three thousand years, if the correction magnets have insufficient energy. Much of the energy budget had been expended by Dr. Del Azarchel during his twenty-seven broadcasts of his brain information over the years.”

“He is not allowed to give orders to you, Twinklewink!”

“That is not precisely true, sir. You gave him permission to use the mind replication system, and at no point did you countermand the order. I was careful to examine his actions, and I detected nothing that could harm the ship or the mission, or even cause humiliation. I did not allow him to use any energy that had been allocated to other tasks.”

“What about this giant tree?”

Twinklewink said, “It does not harm the ship nor impede the mission. If you will like it pruned or removed, please state orders to that effect in clear and actionable language.”

Montrose merely growled. “How about unblocking this window so I can get out and go clout the bastard?”

Twinklewink waved her wand at the twisted tree trunks through which Montrose had thrust his head and one shoulder. The bark turned white as it entered hibernation, and then some sequence of orders to the cellular nanomachinery now controlling the vegetable cells caused the tree trunks touching him to rot and go soft. He pulled his way clear and, moments later, was bounding in the quarter gravity from branch to curling branch, leaping lightly as a cricket along a crazed and crooked curving roadway of wood.

Near the overgrown and ruined garden at the outer radius of the ship, Del Azarchel was seated on a low-hanging branch, a teacup in his hand, staring out through the transparent hull.

“Ah! Montrose,” he began, coming lightly to his feet as Montrose bounded from a nearby limb down across the air toward him. “I have just made an astonishing discovery…”

Without warning or greeting or word of defiance, Montrose struck him across the face with his fist, sending the other man head over heels off the narrow branch in a parabola of spilled tea. The china cup and saucer went flying into the green leaves.

Del Azarchel fell some ten feet to the soil, which was covered with a leafy mold that would have broken his fall even in full gravity. He twisted in midair to land in a crouch and a spray of leaf muck expanding from his boots. His green eyes blazed like the eyes of a wolf, full of murder, and he drew two liquid knives from his sleeve. The blades slithered into their full extension and changed state from liquid to solid with a snap of noise.

“You shall die for that affront!” he said with a smile. There was blood on his teeth. “Whenever the better angels of my nature urge that I should spare you, always you contrive some further indignity.”

“Pox you.” Montrose sneered. “You were rutting about with the machinery while I slept. What’d you expect?”

With no answered word, Del Azarchel leaped up the ten feet—not a difficult jump in the low gravity—and drove the blades toward Montrose, cutting him deeply along the left forearm that Montrose had raised to block. Montrose grabbed Del Azarchel’s right wrist as the blade sought his throat. The momentum carried them both off the branch and into one of the many decorative pools that dotted the garden. As they fell, the blade that Montrose was holding away from his throat suddenly elongated, driving its point inward.

The water rose up slowly and oddly in the low gravity, more like oblate balloons than like a natural splash two men striking the surface should have made. As the water closed over them both, Montrose felt the blade enter him and begin to hoax the cells touched, spreading the command to enter hibernation.

His throat turned white, and his nervous system shut down, forcing him to use his molecular-based nanotech brains scattered throughout his body as a backup.

Over and over in the liquid the combatants tumbled, blood and hibernation fluids staining the medium. Montrose was unable to draw his pistol, since both hands were involved in the clench, but he could send an electric signal from his brain to the firing mechanism, to turn off the shielding and fire. It was an old-fashioned magnetic linear accelerator or caterpillar drive gun, and the expended slug struck Del Azarchel in the foot, removing his big toe; but, more importantly, the electromagnetic pulse from the unshielded firing charge scrambled the brains in Del Azarchel’s daggers, turning them both into limp whips of metal and preventing any more signals from the dagger blade from interfering with Montrose’s internal tissue command structure.

Unexpectedly, the water between the two of them grew thick like mud, solidified, and threw the two of them apart. Both regained their feet. They stood on opposite sides of the pond, near the lip, where it was shallow, Del Azarchel with a metal whip in either hand, Montrose with one hand hanging useless at his side, white and coated with blood, the other holding a glass pistol pointed squarely at Del Azarchel’s head.

“When I decide you need a beating,” said Montrose, “you’ll take it and like it and ask for more!”

“Or what, you subhuman cur? You’ll kill me? We have already agreed on that. It is you who broke the truce between us, not I! My honor is clean!”

“You are up to something, you sneaking spore mold! What were you doing?”

“Scientific research. I was broadcasting my brain information ahead to various points in the Praesepe Cluster, attempting to make contact with the Domination here. If we are to continue, I would like parity of weapons.”

Montrose looked surprised, and looked down at the glass pistol in his hand.

“You have the advantage,” Del Azarchel continued. “I expected you to use a firearm against a man without, but your use of the water here is cowardly.” Montrose saw that the fluid had solidified around Del Azarchel’s legs. “It is understandable that you programmed the objects in the ship to protect you from me.”

“My aunt Bertholda’s scrofulous uvula I did! As if I needed help with a loathsome egomaniacal persistent pandemic pest like you!” He thrust his pistol back into his sash. “Twinklewink! Release him! And put his toe back on while you are at it. Why did you break up the fight?”

A tiny glittering wisp of light glowed from behind a leaf dangling from the low-hanging knotwork of vast trunks and branches overhead. “Captain, I ordered the motile elements in the nanofluid to part you because of your order.”

Del Azarchel arched an eyebrow and delivered a scornful look at Montrose. “I admit I am surprised to have caught you in a lie. This seems somewhat out of character, Cowhand. You are usually too dull to fib.”

Montrose gritted his teeth. “Dammit! I want you dead, but I can’t have you thinking ill of me. I did not give that order!”

Del Azarchel said, “No one else can give orders to the ship but you.”

Montrose said, “Twinklewink! Why did you say I gave that order?”

The leaf moved, and a tiny fairy figurine peered out. Her voice was high and sweet. “I have double-checked with my two backup and parallel sister systems, Glitterdink and Dwinkeltink, and the identification is not in error, despite a margin of divarication. It was clearly you who gave the command.”

Montrose glanced at Del Azarchel, from long habit looking to see if his rival had figured out the puzzle before he did. And Del Azarchel, who had the same habit, was glancing uneasily at him. Each saw the bewilderment in the other man’s face, almost a look of wonder, or fear.