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Dave tapped the brake pedal, turned the steering wheel to the right and pulled into the parking space. He checked the side mirrors to make sure he had pulled in straight, then switched off the ignition.

Beside him, Jim's mouth hung open and his knuckles were white where he gripped the sides of his seat. He sighed as the car turned off, then relaxed.

"I'm never riding in the car with you again," he said.

Dave took his backpack from the floor behind his seat. "Come on, it wasn't that bad. You can't say you've never been above four-fifty in a car before."

"I can say I've never been in one where the person was actually driving the car. You nearly killed both of us!"

He shrugged and opened his door. "I know what I'm doing behind the wheel."

They both got out of the car. "Well, I say you let me drive on the way back. At least I know the difference between safe speeds and reckless ones."

Dave locked the car and looked around for the stairs leading back up to street level. "Which is why I won't let you drive. You aren't used to handling a vehicle at those speeds or even driving in that environment, so it will be much safer for me to drive back myself than to let you behind the wheel."

"Fine. Can you at least drive more slowly on the way home?"

"Maybe. I won't be in a rush to get anywhere on time, but on the other hand it won't be nearly as fun... We'll see."

"So do you know what you're doing at this Animal Research place?" Jim said, squinting in the sunlight as they reached the exit at the top of the stairs.

"The ARA? Yeah, I've submitted a few articles before. Nothing of this magnitude, of course, but I spent all week writing that report, and I called to make an appointment while you were wrapping up your work at the ruins."

He paused, waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street. "What are you going to show them? Even with the video and pictures we have, they could take this as a hoax."

"Well, there are the pictures, the video and the report I wrote, but I also have the scale and wing samples and that blood work one of my old professors--do you remember Dr. Patel?" Jim nodded. "Well, he was able to get that blood work done for me at a discount, and I also have the records of movement for the tracer we put on it."

"Are you sure that's enough?"

Dave shrugged. "Irving said the blood was radically different from anything he'd seen before, so even if they doubted everything else his report would make it impossible to deny."

"They could say you took the blood from a mutant, or something like that. Isn't there supposed to be some mutant out there who can actually turn into... You know, one of them?"

"That would make the truth to my report more likely, not less, I think, especially if that mutant's other form were to have the same characteristics as the one we caught. Even if they tried to reject it blindly, I don't think they'd be able to with this much against them."

"Right. How far is this place, again?"

"Three blocks from the garage, so about a block and a half now. How'd your talk with Alex go?"

He shrugged. "All right, I guess. We settled on eight hundred UNits for you, and Alex will get twelve percent of the money my team makes selling the dra-- The skeleton we found." He glanced at the people around them, but none seemed to have taken any hints from what he had almost said; even so, he couldn't keep his hand from twitching ever so slightly towards the grip of the pistol on his hip.

"How exactly are you going to sell that, though? It won't really be marketable as a dinosaur, considering how relatively young it is, and it's not of any species they're aware of right now."

"Well, obviously we won't sell it until after the world finds out about them, and isn't that what we came here to do?"

Dave nodded. "I think so. Did Alex put the money straight in my account, or was he going to write a check?"

"It'll be in your account by tomorrow, he said." He glanced warily at the group of people passing in the other direction, hand moving towards his pistol again, and this time Dave noticed the motion.

"Relax, would you? It's broad daylight, we're surrounded by people and this is a nice part of town. I don't know why you even brought that thing along."

"Lots of other people are wearing them," Jim said, pointing at a few other people around them. "You never know what could happen; this could end up saving our lives."

"Yes, but nobody else is reaching for their gun every time someone looks at them funny. Will you just calm down?"

Jim didn't relax until they reached the building where their meeting was scheduled and walked inside. Dave passed his backpack over the front desk for a security inspection, and Jim had to check in his gun while they were inside. Once that was done, the receptionist said, "all right, they know you're here, and someone will be out to show you to your meeting room in a few minutes."

"Thanks," Dave said, and he and Jim sat down in the lobby. Dave took out his laptop and prepared the files he needed for the meeting, and Jim picked up a magazine to flip through.

About fifteen minutes later, a man walked into the lobby from the interior of the building. "David Fuller?"

Dave and Jim got to their feet and walked over to the man, who said, "right this way, please."

He showed them to a room at the left end of a hallway and led them inside, where two other men and a woman were seated at a table. The third man took his seat next to them, and motioned for Dave and Jim to sit down on the other side of the table.

"I am Dr. Wilkins, and these are my colleagues, Mr. Hooks, Mrs. Scott and Mr. Anderson; we will be your panel for this meeting. I don't recall hearing much of you before, Mr. Fuller, so an introduction to your past experience and body of work would be appreciated."

Dave swallowed. "Well, most of my work has been with desert animals, including cheetahs, hyenas and giraffes, but I've also done some work with poison frogs and a few other rainforest species."

"I think I may have read one of your reports on giraffes," Mrs. Scott said. "?An Investigation of the Magnitude of the Effects of Throat Infections in Giraffes,' I believe it was. It was... informative."

"Yes, that was one of my more enjoyable projects."

"Anyway, to the point of this meeting," Mr. Anderson said. "You say that you have discovered some sort of... large reptile? That doesn't seem to be your area of expertise."

Dave shrugged and jerked a thumb in Jim's direction. "Well, my brother Jim found the species first, and as I'm the only biologist he knows, he asked me to do what research was possible and make the report."

"Very well. In that case, let's proceed. What is this new species you've discovered?"

Dave hesitated, then opened a video file on his laptop and spun the screen around to face the panel. "It's a dragon," he said in response to the panelists' silence.

Mr. Hooks spoke first. "You know, Mr. Fuller, this is not the first of this sort of ?report' we've seen."

"It's certainly not a hoax, if that's what you're implying," Dave said hotly. "I have nearly a hundred pictures, specimens from its scales and wings, some blood work, and a tracer history all on this computer."

"I also have a bump on the head from where it knocked me into a rock with its tail," Jim offered, but Dave shook his head at him.

"Bring up this blood work, then, and show us the samples you took," said Mrs. Scott.

Dave turned the screen back to face him and brought up the report on the dragon's blood, then took out the bags containing the scale and wing-skin and showed all three to the panelists.

"I know Irving Patel," Dr. Wilkins said once they had finished reading through the report and passed the samples around for each of them to look at. "He wouldn't be one to be fooled by some sort of... counterfeit blood, if you know what I mean. From what I've seen, I think this could actually be real."

"It's... possible," Mr. Anderson said. "You mentioned a tracer history, so did you plant a tracking device on this... dragon?"

Dave pulled up the tracer's map. Most of the locating dots were clustered in a small space, but there were a few spikes leading to some other places, as well, though all of these were within a few kilometers of the rest of the dots. "It hasn't been moving around much, as far as I've noticed," Dave said. "It seems to be nocturnal, so the few times it has moved any large distance, it's been after I went to bed."

"Well, I'm convinced," Mrs. Scott said. "I think this has to be put into the archive immediately."

"I don't know if we can do that," Dr. Wilkins said, "or at least not at this stage. Even if we can see how truthful this most likely is, the simple concept of live dragons just sounds so absurd that we'd be a laughingstock if we tried to publish this. Nobody would take it seriously."

Dave frowned. "They'd have to take it seriously. How could people deny the existence of dragons in the face of all this evidence?"

"It just... It doesn't work that way. The world will not believe on the word of two otherwise unremarkable men that dragons have lived on earth for thousands of years in secret, not even with the ARA behind you. People would laugh and the media would trash us for years if we announced the existence of dragons now, evidence or not. With the visual effects technology we have these days, it would be no stretch of the imagination to say that you two created the dragon with a computer and pulled your research out of thin air."

Dave glared and opened his mouth, but Mr. Hooks cut him off. "Look, we believe you, but even though we know more about the situation than the general public and we've seen all this evidence, I can't quite get my head around it. I'm not sure I can even take this seriously yet."

"What would make you change your mind about that?" Dave asked.

"I'd have to see one for myself. CGI is too good these days to be completely sure a picture or video isn't being faked, and this just seems too fantastic to believe. For a dragonlike creature to have existed at some point in earth's history would be one thing, but to find a live dragon that looks so similar to the typical image of a dragon that's been around for so long..."

"I have an idea," Jim said. "We capture the dragon."

Everyone turned to look at him. "What?"

"That would make you--and everyone else--believe, wouldn't it, if we put one out in public for everyone to see? Besides, we already caught it once, so we know we can do it again, and the tracer path has told us its behavior and where we'll be most likely to find it... Not only would showing off a live dragon give the report instant credibility, but there are other things to consider here: the dragon attacked Dave and me when we caught it, and if we tell the world that dragons exist, it's only going to be natural for people to start seeking dragons out themselves and put themselves in harm's way by doing so. But if the dragon's captured and, say, sold to a zoo or something similar, then not only will everyone believe us, but they'll be safe from the dragon, too."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," said Mr. Anderson. "We don't know how many dragons there are, and removing it from its habitat might destabilize the population by taking it away from any potential mates. It would be a risk."

"Well you have to consider the dragon's well-being, too; what if someone decided to kill it for its scales, or fangs, or claws, or just because that's what happens to the dragon in so many stories? A dragon at a zoo would be well-protected from any humans that might want to kill it, and it wouldn't be able to hurt humans, either. It'd be for the best."

"I see your point," Dr. Wilkins said. He thought for a little while, then said, "right, here's what I think we can do: Mr. Fuller, we'll take your report and hold on to it, to be published at a later date. If you can capture a dragon for us, then we'll release the report at a press conference with the dragon you've caught next to us as undeniable proof that it's not a hoax. Does the rest of the panel agree with me?"

"Yes," they said after a moment.

He looked back across the table. "And how does that sound to you two?"

"Works for me," Jim said, but Dave had to think for a little while.

Finally he said, "all right."

"It's agreed, then," Dr. Wilkins clapped his hands together once and pulled out his own laptop. "Is your report ready to be put in?"

Dave slid his computer back over to his side of the table and opened the file containing his report. "Well, it might need a little touching up..."

"We have editors," Dr. Wilkins said. "You should be getting a PC-PC connection dialogue right now; that's from me. Open it, and transfer the report, please."

Dave closed his report to transfer it, then said, "do you want all the video, pictures and the blood work, too?"

"Yes, please." Dave transferred all three of the folders. "Now, I need to make an abridged version for the sidebar. We'll probably need more to do some more... extensive research to determine the phylum, class, order and all that, so I'll leave those blank for now... Since you two found them, I'll let you come up with a scientific name, but you don't have to tell me anything now if you don't have one prepared. What's the population distribution?"

"Well, I only found the one dragon, but there's evidence that there are others of its kind living with it. Not sure how many, but I have evidence of at least one other, and I'd expect a few more aside from those two. As for the full population count, I have no idea, but the only known location is the Montana portion of the Rocky Mountains, near Polson."

"You may not want to include the location," Jim interrupted. "If we only catch one, there could be others out there, and people could go looking for more of them and, again, put themselves in danger."

"Hmm..." Dr. Wilkins thought for a moment. "That sounds like a good idea, and I'll also add a note that dragons are extremely dangerous and not to be approached under any circumstances. I also think it would be best to mark it as endangered, for now, then officially apply to add it to that list once we can determine a more certain number. Anyway, Mr. Fuller, how about the average length, height, wingspan, weight?"

"It's all in the report, but... The one we caught was twenty meters long; I couldn't tell the height, but it looked like it was about five meters at the shoulders. Wingspan was hard to judge since we had to keep its wings pinioned so it wouldn't fly off, but it looked to be about twice the body length, and the weight estimate was sixty-eight hundred kilograms."

"All right... Was there any indication that it could breathe fire?"

"I found two vents in the back of its mouth--there are pictures--that I think indicate the presence of some sort of mechanism that would allow it to breathe fire, but I don't know how it would work and it didn't breathe fire while we were near it."

"And finally, intelligence and disposition, particularly danger to humans."

"Well, the dragon we caught was violent, though it may have just been defensive; it seemed calm enough before we shot it. Once it was angry, though, it very clearly attempted to hurt or possibly kill us. Intelligence... We aren't sure."

"What could you observe?"

"Well, when it first woke up after capture, it growled at us like it wanted us to go away, but we obviously couldn't because we couldn't just leave it tied up like it was. I tried to speak to it, to calm it down until we could release it, but it showed no understanding of my words. Because of that, I doubt its intelligence."

"Have you considered that it may just not have understood English, but had its own language for use among others of its kind?" Mrs. Scott asked.

Dave paused; that was a good point. "Well... What led us to finding a dragon was an old journal that Jim found at some ruins not far from where we captured the dragon. Among other things, the journal described the dragons being able to make some sort of treaty with the humans led by the man who wrote the journal. That would indicate intelligence, and an ability to understand English, but... As we saw, the dragon didn't seem to understand what I was saying."

"Or maybe it didn't trust you," said Mr. Hooks. "You did shoot it and tie it up without provocation, after all."

He shrugged. "Then maybe we should leave that blank, too."

Dr. Wilkins nodded and took a packet of papers from his bag, then slid them and a pen across the table. "Here's the publication agreement, standard rate; just fill everything in, and we'll be done here."

Dave worked his way through the forms, then finally signed his name at the bottom of the last page and slid the agreement back across the table to Dr. Wilkins.

Dr. Wilkins nodded and stood, reaching across the table to shake Dave's hand, then Jim's. "Thank you both. We'll hold onto all of this and get it prepared for a release sometime in the next week or two, then you can call us once you have a dragon for us to show to the world. Here, my office number is on my card," he passed a business card to Jim.

Dave packed away his laptop, then nodded a goodbye to the four panelists and left the room, Jim trailing behind him. They stopped at the front desk so Jim could pick up his pistol, then the two of them left.

"Capture a dragon and sell it to a zoo?" Dave raised an eyebrow.

"I don't know..." Jim shrugged. "I just have an idea that I think can work. I don't want to get into it right now, though... I don't know exactly what I want to do yet. Give me some time to think."

"All right, then. Do you want to stop for lunch?"

He shook his head, glancing nervously at all the other people on the street. "No, I'm not hungry. Let's just get back to Montana."

Dave nodded. "All right, then, let's go."