door like a guard dog on duty. The dragon's golden scales glinted faintly in the light from the display, shimmering whenever he moved. Jack gazed at the shadowy figure, still trying to wrap his mind around all this.
'So how long were you two together?' he asked suddenly.
The long neck lifted and half turned toward him. 'Pardon?'
'You and your—what did you call him?'
'My symbiont?'
'Yeah, that. How long were you together?'
The gold-scaled tail flicked slightly. 'Polphir and I were companions for ten of your years,' the dragon said.
Jack frowned. 'Is that Earth years, or something else?'
'It is the unit we were told was your time basis,' Draycos said. 'Is there more than one form of the unit?'
'No, if they just said years, they meant Earth Standard,' Jack confirmed. 'You just seem older than that, somehow.'
'I am,' Draycos said. 'Polphir was my second host. I had been with another, named Trachan, for fifteen years before that. And of course I had a guardian host during the five years I was a cub.'
'Ah,' Jack said. So the K'da was somewhere around thirty. That seemed more reasonable. He wondered if that was considered young or old for their species. 'So what happened to Trachan? You two just split up?'
'Shontine and K'da do not 'split up,' ' Draycos said stiffly. 'He was killed in battle with the Valahgua.'
'Oh,' Jack said, grimacing. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to... you know.'
'It is all right,' Draycos said quietly. 'At least I was able to mourn him properly. With Polphir... a proper farewell is not yet possible.'
'I'm sorry,' Jack said again, feeling embarrassed and depressed at the same time. He'd started the conversation in hopes of learning a little more about this strange houseguest they'd picked up. Instead, all he'd accomplished was to dredge up unpleasant memories.
Served him right for starting a conversation in the middle of the night. 'I guess I should let you sleep now, huh?' he added lamely.
'And you must be tired, as well,' Draycos said.
'Yeah,' Jack said. 'Well... good night.'
'Good night.'
Taking a deep breath, Jack rolled over and adjusted the pillow beneath his head. There was a lot he still didn't know about these creatures, and a lot he still needed to know. But there would be time for that.
Anyway, the important point was that the dragon had been fed, he'd been talked to, and it seemed safe to be around him. That was enough for now.
Eventually, of course, things would probably get trickier. Things usually did. But as Uncle Virgil had been fond of saying, that was a worry for another day.
Later, when Draycos returned to his back, he didn't even wake up.
Chapter 9
It was early evening, local time, when the Essenay put down at the main Vagran Colony cargo spaceport.
Or, rather, when the light freighter Donkey's Age put down there. Rather than risk bringing the police or Braxton Security down on their heads right from square one, Jack had decided to use a fake ship ident. It was one of a set of four fakes that Uncle Virgil had bought the same time he'd installed the chameleon hull-wrap.
He used a fake ID for himself, too, and got through customs without raising any alarms. A few minutes later he was walking along the high-ceilinged tube that led inward toward the central terminal building. 'You're being very quiet,' he commented as he walked. 'Do I take it a K'da warrior would never do anything so dishonorable as sneaking in under a phony name?'
'The warrior code recognizes that camouflage is often necessary,' Draycos said from his right shoulder.
'But you still don't like it.'
Draycos hesitated, just enough. 'I am still learning the ways of your society,' he said.
'In other words, you don't like it,' Jack concluded, wondering vaguely why he was even arguing the point. Certainly Draycos didn't want to argue it. Was he actually trying to push the dragon into telling him he'd done something wrong?
If he was, he was wasting his time. 'This place is not as I expected,' Draycos said, again ducking the question. 'Why are there no other beings here? I understood this to be the chief cargo area for this world.'
'Doesn't say much for the world, does it?' Jack agreed, giving up the argument. The tube they were walking along was dirty, as if it hadn't been cleaned or even swept in weeks. Embedded in the graytop beneath their feet, the cargo-carrier monorail tracks looked a little rusty, as if they hadn't been used in years. 'And I've been to worse places than this, too.'
'Yet an important corporation like Braxton Universis had an assembly plant here?'
'Cheap labor, probably,' Jack said. 'Humans and lots of different aliens, too. There's also tons of raw materials out beyond the settlements. The place hasn't been developed very much.'
'They are unfair to their workers?'
