With the Siberian weasel helping to dig, it took only an hour to get the Firestarter fragment out.

It came up in a lump of soft mud, fist-sized. It looked much like the fragment from the Huanglishu Mini-Oasis, and gave off the same particular radiative fluctuation.

Shen Cong was just about to put it away.

The weasel suddenly blocked him, took the fragment into its mouth, and let its feeling roll off it: mine… mine… mine… don't take what's mine…

Anger flared.

Shen Cong looked at it coldly. "Hand it over. If you don't, there's no more spice for you, ever."

The weasel seemed torn. "Spice… mine… the thing… mine…"

"Hand it over!"

"Mine…"

"Hand it over!"

"Mine…"

Man and beast stood deadlocked there in Hengshui Lake, a full ten minutes, neither of them giving way. Seeing the weasel still would not let go, Shen Cong drew a deep breath and prepared to go back on what he had decided earlier. In this state the weasel was plainly too wild to tame, and he might as well trap it to death now and be done with it.

Better than having it turn on him later.

Just then the weasel opened its mouth and spat the fragment out into the water, grunting twice in reluctance, its feeling coming off it: don't want it… yours… spice… mine…

In the end the pull of the spice won out.

Shen Cong felt neither pleased nor sorry. He picked the fragment up, gave the weasel a long look, and decided to give it one more chance. If it showed that unbroken wildness again, he would hold nothing back — he would trap it to death.

Giving up when it did saved the weasel's life.

He took out a handful of spice, smeared it on the weasel's nose, and let it roll around on the ground in delight. Then he went quickly back to the vehicle. There he wrapped the fist-sized meteor fragment into a cabinet built specially out of metal-change, sealing off the radiative fluctuation, to be studied at some later time.

The fragment secured,…