Dragon and Judge

Jack made a face. "Don't you start with me, too. Anyway, what makes you think she's any better at computer hacking than I am?"

"Nothing in particular," Draycos said. "But your techniques just now didn't succeed. There seems little point in refusing to allow Alison to try her methods."

"I suppose not," Jack conceded. "Fine. It can be her turn next."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate that."

"As much as she appreciates anything we do," Jack growled. "I just can't figure her out. She picks at me about twice an hour—"

"More often if you've actually done something to annoy her," Draycos murmured.

"Yeah, well—yeah," Jack said. "But every time we try to drop-kick her off the ship, she refuses to go."

"She has Taneem to think about now," Draycos reminded him. "They're beginning to share the same symbiotic bond that you and I do."

"And, what, Alison thinks the two of them will be safer from Neverlin and the Valahgua if they hang around us?" Jack shrugged.

"Maybe. I don't know, though. I still think she's working some angle."

"Perhaps," Draycos said. "Only time will tell."

Jack snorted gently. "Or else time will slap us flat across the head," he muttered. "I guess we'll find out which."

CHAPTER 2

Jack couldn't remember ever having walked the soil of Semaline. But the soil itself, or at least the aromatic variety around the NorthCentral Spaceport, had most certainly found its way into the ship during their brief visits.

Now, as he walked down the Essenay's ramp, the half-remembered smells flooded across his face like a softly smothering blanket. For a moment his feet seemed to tangle against each other, as if unwilling to move him deeper into the aroma.

"Are you all right?" Draycos asked quietly from his right shoulder.

"I'm fine," Jack assured him, working on getting his stride going again. "I just . . . there's a smell here that really gets to me."

The K'da's head, flattened into its two-dimensional form across Jack's shoulder, rose slightly against his shirt, his tongue flicking out briefly as he tasted the air. "I don't detect anything dangerous," he said.

"I didn't say it was dangerous," Jack countered tartly. "I just said it got to me."

Draycos didn't answer, and Jack grimaced. That had been rude. "Sorry," he apologized. "I guess I'm a little on edge."

"Maybe you should reconsider letting Alison go with you," Uncle Virge suggested from the comm clip on his left shirt collar. "I could be out there in two minutes," Alison's voice seconded.

Jack squared his shoulders. Whatever was on this world, he could handle it. He and Draycos. Not he and Alison Kayna. "Thanks, but I can do this," he said. "You just take care of Taneem. Help her with her English lessons if you get bored."

"Jack, lad—" Uncle Virge began.

"And you just take care of them, okay?" Jack cut him off. "I can do this."

Uncle Virge sighed. "Whatever you say."

The spaceport was laid out in a series of concentric rings, with the ground and air transport pickup point in the center. "Odd design," Draycos commented as the trickles of passengers and crews from the docking slots on the outer edges began to form themselves into a more densely packed inward-moving crowd. "Why would anyone deliberately build a spaceport that actually creates congestion?"

"You got me, buddy symbiont," Jack said, dodging out of the way as a couple of Compfrins pushed past him. "Maybe they don't want big crowds coming through here. It's only a small regional spaceport, you know, on a small out-of-the-way world."

"Not a very wealthy one, either," Draycos commented.

"No, but it could have been," Jack said as he ducked past a group of chattering Jantris through the doorway into the next ring inward. "There are supposed to be some really nice beryllium and iridium deposits in the Golvin territories east of here."

"Why weren't they developed?"

Jack shrugged. "Uncle Virgil told me that some mining corporation had managed to get the whole area tangled up in red tape and paperwork."

Something brushed his back, pulling at the light jacket he'd put on to help conceal the tangler belted at his waist. Jack twitched himself free and kept moving. The brush came again, more insistent this time. Again, Jack pulled away, then turned to see what the problem was.

He found himself gazing half a head down at a Golvin. The alien's long face was gazing up at him, his thin, wiry body visibly trembling. He wore nothing but a knee-length tan-colored vest covered with bulging pockets. "Is there a problem?" Jack asked.

"It is he," the Golvin said, his voice sounding like sandpaper rubbing across slate. "It is the Jupa."

"The Jupas are gone," another Golvin voice objected from behind Jack. Jack turned to find that two more of the wiry creatures had come up behind him. They joined the first in pawing at his jacket, their wide noses snuffling like bloodhounds on a fresh scent.

"Then perhaps this is a third Jupa they have sent to us," the first Golvin said firmly. "He smells much as they did."