Anne McCaffrey - Get Off The Unicorn

A Short Story Collection

Contents

Introduction Lady in the Tower A Meeting of Minds Daughter Dull Drums Changeling Weather on Welladay The Thorns of Barevi Horse from a Different Sea The Great Canine Chorus Finder's Keeper A Proper Santa Claus The Smallest Dragonboy Apple Honeymoon

Introduction

"Lady in the Tower" and "A Meeting of Minds" are really logical extensions of the concept found in "To Ride Pegasus," in which parapsychic powers are combined with machines in a gestalt that gives the mind enough power to reach the stars. They both predate Dai op Owen and the Eastern Parapsychic Center.

"Lady" is the story I prefer to acknowledge as my first; it appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in April 1959, in the distinguished company of Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon." Algis Budrys was a reader for Bob Mills at the time and he brought the story to Bob's notice. They both felt that it needed some reworking and asked my permission, which, needless to say, I immediately and ecstatically gave. (Someone wanted to publish a story of mine? Leap, grab, say YES!) I don't remember all the changes Algis made, and I've made a few myself with the wisdom and expertise of twenty years of writing and publishing. But basically, it's the same story.

Ten years later, "A Meeting of Minds" was published by Ed Perman, the new editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have also done a good deal of rewriting on it, since that story had appeared so long after its parent story.

Both are unashamed love stories. That's what I do best: combining either science fact or fantasy with heterogeneous inter 'reaction.

These two stories were supposed to be part of a novel I'd tentatively entitled The Bitter Tower. But, when I got started on the story "A Womanly Talent," I got involved with Dai op Owen and wrote the four stories which comprise To Ride Pegasus. So these two stories never became part of a novel. But the Raven women are good strong characters, and who knows when I'll write about that third generation of Ravens.

Lady in the Tower

When the Rowan came storming toward the station, its personnel mentally and literally ducked. Mentally, because she was apt to forget to shield. Literally, because the Rowan was prone to slamming around desks and filing cabinets when she got upset. Today, however, she was in fair command of herself and merely stamped up the stairs into the tower. A vague rumble of noisy thoughts tossed around the first floor of the station for a few minutes, but the computer and analogue men ignored the depressing effects with the gratitude of those saved from greater disaster.

From the residue of her passage, Brian Ackerman, the stationmaster, caught the impression of intense purple frustration. He was basically only a T9, but constant association with the Rowan had widened his area of perception. Ackerman appreciated this side effect of his position he was anywhere else but at the station.

He had been trying to quit Callisto for more than five years, with no success. Federal Telepathers and Teleporters, Inc., had established a routine regarding his continuous applications for transfer. The first one handed in each quarter was ignored; the second brought an adroitly worded reply on how sensitive and crucial a position he held at Callisto Prime Station; his third—often a violently worded demand always got him a special shipment of scotch and tobacco; his fourth—a piteous wail—brought the Section Supervisor out for a facetoface chat and, only then, a few discreet words to the Rowan.

Ackerman was positive she always knew the full story before the Supervisor finally approached her. It pleased her to be difficult, but the one time AckermaQ discarded protocol and snarled back at her, she had mended her ways for a whole quarter. It had reluctantly dawned on Ackerman that she must like him and he had since used this knowledge to advantage. He had lasted eight years, as against five stationmasters in three months before his appointment.

Each of the twentythree station staff members had gone through a similar shuffling until the Rowan had accepted them. It took a very delicate balance of mental talent, personality, and intelligence to achieve the proper gestalt needed to move giant liners and tons of freight. Federal Tel and Tel had only five complete Primes—five Tl's—each strategically placed in a station near the five major and most central stars to effect the best possible transmission of commerce and communications throughout the sprawling NineStar League. The lesser staff positions at each Prime Station were filled by personnel who could only teleport, or telepath. It was FT & T's dream someday to provide instantaneous transmission of anything, anywhere, anytime. Until that day, FT & T exercised patient diplomacy with its five Tl's, putting up with their vagaries like the doting owners of so many golden geese. If keeping the Rowan happy had meant changing the entire lesser personnel twice daily, it would probably have been done. As it happened, the present staff had been intact for over two years and only minor soothing had been necessary.

Ackerman hoped that only minor soothing would be needed today. The Rowan had been peevish for a week, and he was beginning to smart under the backlash. So far no one knew why the Rowan was upset.

Ready for the liner! Her thought lashed out so piercingly that Ackerman was sure everyone in the ship waiting outside had heard her. But he switched the intercom in to the ship's captain.

"I heard," the captain said wryly. "Give me a fivecount and then set us off."

Ackerman didn"t bother to relay the message to the Rowan. In her mood, she'd be hearing straight to Capella and back. The generator men were hopping between switches, bringing the booster field up to peak, while she impatiently revved up the launching units to pushoff strength. She was well ahead of the standard timing, and the pentup power seemed to keen through the station. The countdown came fast as the singing power note increased past endurable limits.

ROWAN, NO TRICKS, Ackerman said.

He caught her mental laugh, and barked a warning to the captain. He hoped the man had heard it, because the Rowan was on zero before he could finish and the ship was gone beyond radio transmission distance in seconds.

The keening dynamos lost only a minute edge of sharpness before they sang at peak again. The lots on the launchers snapped out into space as fast as they could be set up. Then the loads rocketed into receiving area from other Prime Stations, and the ground crews hustled rerouting and hold orders. The power note settled to a bearable hum as the Rowan worked out her mood without losing the efficient and accurate thrust that made her FT & T's best Prime.

One of the ground crew signaled a frantic yellow across the board, then red as ten tons of cargo from Earth settled on the Priority Receiving cradle. The waybill said Deneb VIII, which was at the Rowan's limit. But the shipment was marked "Rush/Emergency, priority medicine for a virulent plague on the colony planet." And the waybill specified direct transmission.

Well, where're my coordinates and my placement photo? snapped the Rowan. / can't thrust blind, you know, and we've always rerouted for Deneb VIII.

Bill Powers was flipping through the indexed catalogue, but the Rowan reached out and grabbed the photo.

Zowie! Do I have to land all that mass there myself?

No, Lazybones, I'll pick it up at 24.578.82—that nice little convenient black dwarf midway. You won't have to strain a single convolution. The lazy masculine voice drawled in every mind.

The silence was deafening.

Well, I'll be... came from the Rowan.

Of course, you are, sweetheart—just push that nice little package out my way. Or is it too much for you? The lazy voice was solicitous rather than insulting.

You'll get your package! replied the Rowan, and the dynamos keened piercingly just once as the ten tons disappeared out of the cradle.

Why, you little minx... slow it down or I'll bum your ears back!

Come out and catch it! The Rowan's laugh broke off in a gasp of surprise and Ackerman could feel her slamming up her mental shields. / want that stuff in one piece, not smeared a millimeter thin on the surface, my dear, the voice said sternly. Okay, I've got it. Thanks! We need this.

Hey, who the blazes are you? What's your placement?

Deneb Sender, my dear, and a busy little boy right now. Ta ta.

The silence was broken only by the whine of the dynamos dying to an idle burr.

Not a hint of what the Rowan was thinking came through now, but Ackerman could pick up the aura of incredulity, shock, speculation, and satisfaction that pervaded the thoughts of everyone else in the station. The Rowan had met her match. No one except a Tl could have projected that far. There'd been no mention of another Tl at FT & T, and, as far as Ackerman knew, FT & T had all of the five known Tls. However, Deneb was now in its third generation and colonial peculiarities had produced the Rowan in two.

"Hey, people," Ackerman said, "sock up your shields. She's not going to like your drift."

Dutifully the aura was dampened, but the grins did not fade and Powers started to whistle cheerfully.

Another yellow flag came up from a ground man on the Altair hurdle and the waybill designated Live shipment to Betelgeuse. The dynamos whined noisily and then the launcher was empty. Whatever might be going through her mind at the moment, the Rowan was doing her work.

All told, it was an odd day, and Ackerman didn't know whether to be thankful or not. He had no precedents to go on and the Rowan wasn't leaking any clues. She spun the day's lot in and out with careless ease. By the time Jupiter's bulk had moved around to blanket outsystem traffic, Callisto's day was over, and the Rowan wasn't offpower as much as decibel one. Once the inSun traffic was finished with, Ackerman signed off for the day. The computer banks and dynamos were slapped off... but the Rowan did not come down.

Ray Loftus and Afra, the Capellan T4, came over to sit on the edge of Ackerman's desk. They took out cigarettes. As usual, Afra's yellow eyes began to water from the smoke.

"I was going to ask her Highness to give me a lift home," Loftus said, "but I dunno now. Got a date with—"

He disappeared. A moment later, Ackerman could see him near a personnel carrier. Not only had he been set gently down, but various small necessities, among them a shaving kit, floated out of nowhere onto a neat pile in the carrier. Ray was given time to settle himself before the hatch sealed and he was whisked off.

Powers joined Afra and Ackerman. "She's sure in a funny mood," he said. When the Rowan got peevish, few of the men at the station asked her to transport them to Earth. She was psychologically held planetbound, and resented the fact that lesser talents could be moved about through space without suffering traumatic shock.

Anyone else?

Adier and Toglia spoke up and promptly disappeared together. Ackerman and Powers exchanged looks which they hastily suppressed as the Rowan appeared before them, smiling. It was the first time that welcome and totally unexpected expression had crossed her face for two weeks.

She smiled but said nothing. She took a drag of Ackerman's cigarette and handed it back with a thankyou. For all her temperament, the Rowan acted with propriety face to face. She had grown up with her skill, carefully taught by the old and original Tl, Siglen, the Altairian. She'd had certain courtesies drilled into her: the less gifted could be alienated by inappropriate use of talent. She was perfectly justified in "reaching" things during business hours, but she employed the usual methods at other times.

"The big boys mention our Denebian friend before?" she asked, all too casually.

Ackerman shook his head. "Those planets are three generations colonized, and you came out of Altair in two."

"That could explain it, but there isn't even an FT & T station. And you know they advertise continuously for anyone with Talent."

"He's a wild talent?" Powers helpfully suggested.

"Too far off the beaten track." She shook her head. "I checked it. All I can get from Center is that they received an urgent call about a virus, were given a rundown on the syndrome and symptoms. Lab came up with a serum, batched and packed it. They were assured that there was someone capable of picking it up and taking it the rest of the way past 24.578.82 if a Prime would get it that far. And that's all anybody knows." Then she added thoughtfully, "Deneb VIII isn't a very big colony."

Oh, we're big enough, sweetheart, interrupted the drawling voice. Sorry to get you after hours, my dear, but 1 can't seem to get in to Terra and I heard you coloring the atmosphere.

What's wrong? the Rowan asked. Did you smear your serum after all that proud talk?

Smear it hell! I've been drinking it. We've got some ET visitors. They think they're exterminators. Thirty UFO's are perched four thousand miles above us. That batch of serum you wafted out to me this morning was for the sixth virus we've been socked with in the last two weeks. Soon as our boys whip up something to knock out one, another takes its place. Ifs always worse than the one before. We've lost 25 percent of our population already and this last virus is a beaut. I want two top germdogs out here on the double and about three patrol squadrons. We're fiat on our backs now. I doubt our friends will hover around, dousing us with nasty bugs much longer. They're going to start blowing holes in us any minute now. So sort of push the word along to Earth, will you, sweetheart? And get us some heavy support!

I'll relay, naturally. But why don't you send direct?

To whom? You're the only one I can hear.

Your isolation won't last much longer if I know my bosses.

You may know your bosses, but you don't know me.

That can always be arranged.

This is no time for flirting. Get that message through for me like a good girl.

Which message?

The one I just gave you.

That old one? They say you can have two germdogs in the morning as soon as we clear Jupiter. But Earth says no squadrons. No armed attack.

You can doubletalk too, huh? You're talented. But the morning does us no good. Now is when we need them. Can't you sling them... no, they might leave a few important atoms or something in Jupiter's mass. But I've got to have some pretty potent help, and if six viruses don't constitute armed attack, what does?

Missiles constitute armed attack, the Rowan said primly.

I'll notify my friends up there. Missiles would be preferable. Them 1 can see, I need those germdogs now. Can't you turn your sweet little mind to a solution?

As you mentioned, it's after hours.

By the Horsehead, woman! the drawl was replaced by a cutting mental roar. My friends are dying!

Look, after hours here means we're behind Jupiter... But... Wait! How deep is your range?

I don't honestly know. And doubt crept into the bodiless voice in their minds.

"Ackerman." The Rowan turned to her stationmaster.

"I've been listening."

Hang on, Deneb, I've got an idea. I'll deliver your germdogs. Open to me in half an hour.

The Rowan whirled on Ackerman. "I want my shell." Her brilliant eyes were flashing and her face was alight. "Afra!"

The station's T4, a handsome yelloweyed Capellan, raised himself from the chair in which he'd been quietly watching her. Afra was second in command of the station.

"Yes, Rowan?"

Abruptly she realized that her mental conversation with the Denebian had been heard by all the others. Her fleeting frown was replaced by the miraculous smile that always disconcerted Ackerman with its hint of suppressed passion. She looked at each of the men, bathing them in that smile.

"I want to be launched, slowly, over Jupiter's curve," she said to Afra. Ackerman switched up the dynamos, Bill Powers punched for her special shell to be deposited on the launching rack. "Real slow, Afra. Then I'll want to draw heavy." She took a deep breath. Like all Primes, she was unable to launch herself through space. Her initial trip from Altair to Callisto had almost driven her mad with agoraphobia. Only by the exercise of severe selfdiscipline was she able to take her specially opaque shell a short way off Callisto.

She took another deep breath and disappeared from the station. Then she was beside the launcher. She settled daintily into the shock couch of the shell. The moment the lock whistle shut off, she could feel the shell moving gently, gently away from Callisto. She could sense Afra's reassuring mental touch. Only when the shell had swung into position over Jupiter's great curve did she reply to the priority call coming from Earth Central.

Now what the Billy blue blazes are you doing, Rowan? The voice of Reidinger, the FT & T Central Prime, cracked across the void. Have you lost what's left of your precious mind?

She's doing me a favor, Deneb said, unexpectedly joining them.

Who'n hell're you? demanded Reidinger. Then, in shocked surprise, Deneb! How'd you get out there?

Wishful thinking. Hey, push those germdogs to my pretty friend here, huh?

Now, wait a minute! You're going a little too far, Deneb. You can't burn out my best prime with an unbased send like this.

Oh, I'll pick up midway. Like those antibiotics this morning.

Deneb, what's this business with antibiotics and germdogs? What're you cooking up out there in that heathenish hole?

Oh, we're merely fighting a few plagues with one hand and keeping thirty bogey ET's upstairs. Deneb gave them a look with his vision at an enormous hospital, a continuous stream of airborne ambulances coming in: at crowded wards, grimfaced nurses and doctors, and uncomfortable high piles of sheeted still figures.

Well, I didn't realize. All right, you can have anything you want—within reason. But I want a full report, said Reidinger.

And patrol squadrons?

Reidinger's tone changed to impatience. You've obviously got an exaggerated idea of our capabilities. I can't mobilize patrol squadrons like that! There was a mental snap of fingers.

Would you perhaps drop a little word in the C.O.C's ear? Those ET's may gobble Deneb tonight and go after Terra tomorrow.

I'll do what I can, of course, but you colonists agreed to the risks when you signed up. The ET's were probably hoping for a soft touch. You're showing them different. They'll give up and get— You're all heart, said Deneb.

Reidinger was silent for a moment. Then he said, Germdogs sealed, Rowan; Pick 'em up and throw 'em out, and signed off.

Rowan—that's a pretty name, said Deneb.

Thanks, she said absently. She had followed along Reidinger's initial push, and picked up the two personnel carriers as they materialized beside her shell. She pressed into the station dynamos and gathered strength. The generators whined and she pushed out. The carriers disappeared.

They're coming in. Rowan. Thanks a lot.

A passionate and tender kiss was blown to her across eighteen lightyears of space. She tried to follow after the carriers and pick up his touch again, but he was no longer receiving.

She sank back in her couch. Deneb's sudden appearance had disconcerted her completely. All of the Primes were isolated in their high talents, but the Rowan was more alone than any of the others.

Siglen, the Altairian Prime who had discovered the Rowan as a child and carefully nursed her talent into its tremendous potential, was the oldest Prime of all. The Rowan, a scant twentythree now, had never gotten anything from Siglen to comfort her except oldfashioned platitudes. Betelgeuse Prime David was madly in love with his T2 wife and occupied with raising a brood of highpotential brats. Although Reidinger was always open to the Rowan, he also had to keep open every single minute to all the vast problems of the FT & T system. Capella was available but so mixed up herself that her touch aggravated the Rowan to the point of fury.

Reidinger had tried to ease her devastating loneliness by sending up T3's and T4's like Afra, but she had never taken to any of them. The only male T2 ever discovered in the NineStar League had been a confirmed homosexual. Ackerman was a nice, barely talented guy, devoted to his wife. And now, on Deneb, a Tl had emerged, out of nowhere—and so very, very far away.

Afra, take me home now, she said, very tired. Afra brought the shell down with infinite care. After the others had left the station, the Rowan lay for a long while on her couch in the personnel carrier. In her unsleeping consciousness, she was aware that the station was closing down, that Ackerman and the others had left for their homes until Callisto once more came out from behind Jupiter's titan bulk. Everyone had some place to go, except the Rowan who made it all possible. The bitter, screaming loneliness that overcame her during her off hours welled up—the frustration of being unable to go offplanet past Afra's sharply limited range—alone, alone with her twoedged talent. Murky green and black swamped her mind until she remembered the blown kiss. Suddenly, completely, she fell into her first restful sleep in two weeks.

Rowan. It was Deneb's touch that roused her. Rowan, please wake up.

Hmmmm? Her sleepy response was reluctant.

Our guests are getting rougher... since the germdogs... whipped up a broad spectrum antibiotic... that phase... of their attack failed... so now they're... pounding us... with missiles... give my regards to your spacelawyer friend... Reidinger.

You're playing pitch with missiles? The Rowan came awake hurriedly. She could feel Deneb's contact cutting in and out as he interrupted himself to catch incoming missiles and fling them back. / need backup help, sweetheart, like you and... any twin sisters... you happen... to have... handy. Buzz over... here, will you?

Buzz? What? I can't go there!

Why not?

I can't! I can't f The Rowan moaned, twisting against the web of the couch.

But I've got... to... have... help, he said and faded away.

Reidinger! The Rowan's call was a scream.

Rowan, I don't care if you are a Tl. There are certain limits to my patience and you've stretched every blasted one of them, you little whitehaired ape!

His answer scorched her. She blocked automatically but clung to his touch. Someone has got to help Deneb! she cried, transmitting the Mayday.

What? He's joking!

How could he, about a thing like that!

Did you see the missiles? Did he show you what he was actually doing?

No, but I felt him thrusting. And since when does one of us distrust another when he asks for help.

Since when? Reidinger's reply crackled across space. Since Eve handed Adam a rosy round fruit and said "eat." And exactly since Deneb's never been integrated into the prime network. We can't be sure who or what he is—or exactly where he is. I don't like this taking everything at his word. Try and get him back for me to hear.

I can't reach him! He's too busy lobbing missiles spaceward.

That's a hot one! Look, he can tap any other potentials on his own planet. That's all the help he needs.

But...

But me no buts and leave me alone. I'll play cupid only so far. Meanwhile I've got a company—a league— to hold together. Reidinger signed off with a backlash that stung. The Rowan lay in her couch, bewildered by Reidinger's response. He was always busy, always gruff. But he had never been stupidly unreasonable. While out there, Deneb was growing weaker...

Callisto was clear of Jupiter and the station was operating again. Incoming cargoes were piling up on the launchers. But there was no outgoing traffic. Tension and worry hung over the station.

"There must be something we can do for him... something," the Rowan said, choked with tears.

Afra looked down at her sadly and compassionately, and patted her frail shoulder.

"What? Not even you can reach all the way out to him. Patrol Squadrons are needed by what you've said, but we can't send them. Did you ask him if he's tried to find help on his own planet?" ".

"He needs Prime help and—"

"You're all tied to your little worlds with the umbilical cord of spacefear," Afra finished for her, a blunt summation of the problem that made her wince for her devastating inability.

Kerrist! The radar warning! Ackerman's mental shout startled both of them.

Instantly the Rowan linked her mind to his as Acker man plunged toward the littleused radar screen. As she probed into space, she found the intruder, a highly powered projectile, arrowing in from behind Uranus. Guiltily she flushed, for she ought to have detected it away beyond the radar's range.

There was no time to run up the idling dynamos.

The projectile was coming in too fast.

I want a wideopen mind from everyone on this moon! The Rowan's broadcast was inescapable. She 14 felt the surge of power as fortyeight talents on Callisto, including Ackerman's tenyearold son, lowered their shields. She picked up their power—from the least 12 to Afra's sturdy 4—sent her touch racing out beyond Jupiter, and reached the alien bomb. She had to wrestle for a moment with the totally unfamiliar molecular structure of its constituents. Then, with her augmented energy, it was easy enough to deactivate the trigger and then scatter the fissionables from the warhead into Jupiter's seething mass.

She released the others who had joined her and fell back into the couch.

"How in hell did that thing find us?" Afra asked from the chair in which he had slumped.

She shook her head wearily. Without the dynamos, there had been no surge of power to act as the initial carrier wave for her touch. Even with the help of the others—and all of them put together didn't add up to onethird the strength of another Prime—it had been a wearying exercise. She thought of Deneb—alone, without an FT & T Station to assist him—doing this again, and again, and again—and her heart twisted.

Warm up the dynamos, Brian—there'll be more of those missiles.

Afra looked up, startled.

Prime Rowan of Callisto Station alerting Earth Prime Reidinger and all other primes! Prepare for possible attack by fissionable projectiles of alien origin. Alert all radar watch stations and patrol forces. She lost her official calm and added angrily. We've got to help Deneb now—we've got to! Ifs no longer an isolated aggression against an outlying colony. Ifs a concerted attack on our heart world. Ifs an attack on every prime in the ninestar league.

Rowan! Before Reidinger got more than her name into her mind, she opened to him and showed the five new projectiles driving toward Callisto. For the love of little apples! Reidinger's mind radiated incredulity. What has our little man been stirring up?

Shall we find out? Rowan asked with deadly sweetness.

Reidinger transmitted impatience, fury, misery and then shock as he gathered her intention. I?

Your plan won't work. Ifs impossible. We can't merge minds to fight. All of us are too egocentric. Too unstable. We'd burn out, fighting each other.

You, me, Altair, Betelgeuse and Capella. We can do it. If I can deactivate one of those hell missiles with only fortyeight minor talents and no power for help, five primes plus full power ought to be able to turn the trick. We can knock the missiles off. Then we can merge with Deneb to help him, that'll make six of us. Show me the ET who could stand up to such a counterassault!

Look girl, Reidinger replied, almost pleading, We don't have his measure. We can't just merge—He could split us apart, or we could burn him up. We don't know him. We can't gauge a telepath of unknown ability.

You'd better catch that missile coming at you, she said calmly. 1 can't handle more than ten at a time and keep up a sensible conversation.

She felt Reidinger's resistance to her plan weakening. She pushed the advantage. If Deneb's been handling a planetwide barrage, that's a pretty good indication of his strength. I'll handle the egomerge because I damned well want to. Besides, there isn't any other course open to us now, is there? We could launch patrol squadrons. We should have done that the first time he asked.

It's too late now.

Their conversation was taking the briefest possible time and yet more missiles were coming in. All the Prime stations were under bombardment.

All right, Reidinger said in angry resignation, and contacted the other Primes.

No, no, no! You'll burn her out—burn her out, poor thing! Old Siglen from Altair babbled. Let us stick to our last—we dare not expose ourselves, no, no, no! The ET's would attack us then.

Shut up, Ironpants, David said.

Shoulder to the wheel, you old wart, Capella chimed in waspishly. Hit hard first, that's safest.

Look, Rowan, Reidinger said. Siglen's right. He could burn you out. I'll take the chance.

Damn Deneb for starting all this! Reidinger didn't quite shield his aggravation. We've got to do it. And now!

Tentatively at the outset, and then with stunningly increased force, the unleashed power of the other FT & T Primes, augmented by the mechanical surge of the five stations' generators, was forced through the Rowan. She grew, grew and only dimly saw the puny ET bombardment swept aside like so many mayflies. She grew, grew until she felt herself a colossus, larger than ominous Jupiter. Slowly, carefully, tentatively, because the massive power was braked only by her slender conscious control, she reached out to Deneb.

She spun on, in grandeur, astounded by the limitless force she had become. She passed the small black dwarf that was the midway point. Then she felt the mind she searched for; a tired mind, its periphery wincing with weariness but doggedly persevering its evasive actions.

Oh, Deneb, Deneb, you're still intact! She was so relieved, so grateful to find him fighting his desperate battle that they merged before her ego could offer even a token resistance. She abandoned her most guarded self to him and, with the surrender, the massed power she held flowed into him. The tired mind of the man grew, healed, strengthened and blossomed until she was a mere fraction of the total, lost in the greater part of this immense mental whole. Suddenly she saw with his eyes, heard with his ears and felt with his touch, was immersed in the titanic struggle.

The greenish sky above was pitted with mushroom puffs, and the raw young hills around him were scarred with deflected missiles. Easily now, he was turning aside the warheads aimed at him.

Let's go up there and find out what they are, the Reidinger segment said. Now!

Deneb approached the thirty milelong ships. The massmind took indelible note of the intruders. Then, offhandedly, Deneb broke the hulls of twentynine of the ET ships, spilling the contents into space. To the occupants of the survivor, he gave a searing impression of the Primes and the indestructability of the worlds in this section of space. With one great heave, he threw the lone ship away from his exhausted planet, set it hurtling farther than it had come, into uncharted black immensity.

He thanked the Primes for the incomparable compliment of an egomerge and explained in a millisecond the tremendous gratitude of his planet, based on all that Denebians had accomplished in three generations which had been so nearly obliterated and emphasized by their hopes for the future.

The Rowan felt the links dissolving as the other Primes, murmuring withdrawal courtesies, left him. Deneb caught her mind fast to his and held on. When they were alone, he opened all this thoughts to her, so that now she knew him as intimately as he knew her.

Sweet Rowan. Look around you. It'll take a while for Deneb to be beautiful again but we'll make it lovelier than ever. Come live with me, my love.

The Rowan's wracked cry of protest reverberated cruelly in both naked minds. / can't! I can't! She cringed against her own outburst and closed off her inner heart so that he couldn't see the pitiful why. In the moment of his confusion, she retreated back to her frail body, and beat her fists hopelessly against her thighs.

Rowan! came his cry. Rowan, I love you.

She deadened the outer fringe of her perception to everything and curled forward in her chair. Afra, who had watched patiently over her while her mind was far away, touched her shoulder.

Oh, Afra! To be so close to love and so far away. Our minds were one. Our bodies are forever separate. Deneb! Deneb!

The Rowan forced her bruised self into sleep. Afra picked her up gently and carried her to a bed in a room off the station's main level. He shut the door and tiptoed away. Then he sat down, on watch in the corridor outside, his handsome face dark with sorrow, his yellow eyes blinking away moisture.

Afra and Ackerman reached the only possible conclusion: the Rowan had burned herself out. They'd have to tell Reidhiger. Fortyeight hours had elapsed since they'd had a single contact with her mind. She had not heard, or had ignored, their tentative requests for her assistance. Afra, Ackerman, and the machines could handle some of the routing and freighting, but two liners were due in and that required her. They knew she was alive but that was all: her mind was blank to any touch. At first, Ackerman had assumed that she was recuperating. Afra had known better and, for that fortyeight hours, he'd hoped fervently that she would accept the irreconcilable situation.

"I'll run up the dynamos," Ackerman said to Afra with a reluctant sigh, "and we'll tell Reidinger."

Well, where's Rowan? Reidinger asked. A moment's touch with Afra told him. He, too, sighed. We'll just have to rouse her some way. She isn't burned out; that's one mercy.

Is it? replied Ackerman bitterly. // you'd paid attention to her in the first place...

Yes, I'm sure, Reidinger cut him off brusquely. If I'd gotten her light of love his patrol squadrons when she wanted me to, she wouldn't have thought of merging with him mentally. I put as much pressure on her as I dared. But when that cocky young rooster on Deneb started lobbing deflected ET missiles at us... I hadn't counted on that development. At least we managed to spur her to act. And offplanet at that. He sighed. / was hoping that love might make at least one prime fly.

Whaaaat? Afra roared. You mean that battle was staged?

Hardly. As I said, we hadn't anticipated the ET. Deneb presumably had only a mutating virus plague to cope with. Not ET.

Then you didn't know about them?

Of course not! Reidinger sounded disgusted. Oh, the original contact with Deneb for biological assistance was sheer chance. I took it as providential, an opportunity to see if I couldn't break the fear psychosis we all have. Rowan's the youngest of us. If I could get her to go to him—physically—I failed. Reidinger's resignation saddened Afra, too. One didn't consider the Central Prime as a fallible human. Love isn't as strong as it's supposed to be. And where I'll get new Primes if / can't breed 'em, I don't know. I'd hoped that Rowan and Deneb...

As a matchmaker... / should resign...

Afra cut the contact abruptly as the door opened, admitting the Rowan, a wan, pale, very quiet Rowan.

She smiled apologetically. "I've been asleep a long time."

"You had a tiring day," Ackennan said gently.

She winced and then smiled to ease Ackerman's instant concern. "I still am, a little." Then she frowned. "Did I hear you two talking to Reidinger just now?"

"We got worried," Ackennan replied. "There're two liners coming in, and Afra and I just plain don't care to handle human cargo, you know."

The Rowan gave a rueful smile. "I know. I'm all set." She walked slowly up the stairs to her tower.

Ackerman shook his head sadly. "She sure has taken it hard."

Her chastened attitude wasn't the relief that her staff had once considered it might be. The work that day went on with monotonous efficiency, with none of the byplay and freakish temperament that had previously kept them on their toes. The men moved around automatically, depressed by this gently tragic Rowan. That might have been one reason why no one noticed particularly when, toward the very end of the day, the young man came in. Only when Ackerman rose from his desk for more coffee did he notice him sitting there quietly.

"You new?"

"Well, yes. I was told to see the Rowan. Reidinger signed me on in his office late this morning." He spoke pleasantly, rising to his feet slowly and ending his explanation with a smile. Fleetingly Ackerman was reminded of the miracle of the Rowan's sudden smiles that hinted at some incredible treasure of the spirit. This man's smile was full of uninhibited, magnetic vigor, and the brilliant blue eyes danced with good humor and friendliness.

Ackerman found himself grinning back like a fool, and shaking the man's hand stoutly.

"Mightly glad to know you. What's your name?"

"Jeff Raven. I just got in from—"

"Hey, Afra, want you to meet Jeff Raven. Here, have a coffee. A little raw on the walk up from the freighting station, isn't it? Been on any other Prime stations?"

"As a matter of fact..."

Toglia and Loftus had looked around from their computers to the recipient of such unusual cordiality. They found themselves as eager to welcome this magnetic stranger. Raven graciously accepted the coffee from Ackerman, who instantly proffered cigarettes. The stationmaster had the feeling that he must give this wonderful guy something else, it had been such a pleasure to provide him with coffee.

Afra looked quietly at the stranger, his calm yellow eyes a little clouded. "Hello," he said in a rueful murmur.

Jeff Raven's grin altered imperceptibly. "Hello," he replied, and more was exchanged between the two men than a simple greeting.

Before anyone in the station quite realized what was happening, everyone had left his post and gathered around Raven, chattering and grinning, using the simplest excuse to touch his hand or shoulder. He was genuinely interested in everything said to him, and although there were twentythree people vying anxiously to monopolize his attention, no one felt slighted. His reception seemed to envelop them all.

What the hell is happening down there? asked the Rowan with a tinge of her familiar irritation. Why...

Contrary to all her previously sacred rules, she appeared suddenly in the middle of the room, looked about wildly. Raven touched her hand gently.

"Reidinger said you needed me," he said.

"Deneb?" Her body arched to project the astounded whisper. "Deneb? But you're... you're here! You're here!"

He smiled tenderly and drew his hand across her shining hair. The Rowan's jaw dropped and she burst out laughing, the laughter of a supremely happy carefree girl. Then her laughter broke off in a gasp of pure terror.

How did you get here?

Just came. You can, too, you know.

No, no, I can't. No Tl can. The Rowan tried to free herself from his grasp as if he were suddenly repulsive. / did, though. His gentle insistence was unequivocable. Ifs only a question of rearranging atoms. Why should it matter whose they are?

Oh, no, no...

"Did you know," Raven said conversationally, speaking for everyone's benefit "that Siglen of Altair gets sick just going up and down stairs?" He looked straight at the Rowan. "You remember that she lives all on one floor? Ever wondered why all her furniture has short legs, Rowan?"

The girl shook her head, her eyes wonderingly wide.

"No one ever stopped to ask why, did they? I did. Seemed damned silly to me when I met the woman. Siglen's middle ear reacts very badly to freefall. She was so miserably sick the first time she tried moving herself anywhere, she went into a trauma about it. Of course, it never occurred to her to find out why. So she went a little crazy on the subject, and who trained all the other Primes?"

"Siglen... Oh, Deneb, you mean?..."

Raven grinned. "Yes, I do. She passed on the trauma to every one of you. The Curse of Talent! The Great Fear! The great bushwah! But agoraphobia, or a middleear imbalance, is not a stigma of Talent. Siglen never trained me." He laughed with wicked boyish delight and opened his mind to the Rowan. Warmth and reassurance passed between them. Her careful conditioning began to wither in that warmth. Her eyes shone.

Now come live with me and be my love. Rowan. Reidinger says you can commute from here to Deneb every day.

"Commute?" She said it aloud, conscious of the overall value of Siglen's training, but already questioning every aspect.

"Certainly," Jeff said, approving her thoughts. "You're still a working Tl under contract to FT & T. And so, my love, am I."

"I guess I dp know my bosses, don't I?" she said with a chuckle.

"Well, the terms were fair. Reidinger didn't haggle for a second after I walked into his private office at eleven this morning."

"Commuting to Callisto?" the Rowan repeated dazedly.

"All finished here for the day?" Raven asked Ackerman, who shook his head after a glance at the launching racks.

"C'mon, gal. Take me to your ivory tower and we'll finish up in a jiffy. Then we'll go home. With two of us working in our spare time, Deneb'll be put to rights in no time... And when we've finished that...

Jeff Raven smiled wickedly at the Rowan and pressed her hand to his lips in the ageold gesture of courtliness. The Rowan's smile answered his with blinding joy.

The others were respectfully silent as the two Talents made there way up the stairs to the oncelonely tower.

Afra broke the tableau by taking the burning cigarette from Ackerman's motionless hand. He took a deep drag that turned his skin a deeper green. It wasn't the cigarette smoke that caused his eyes to water so profusely.

"Not that that pair needs much of our help, people," he said, "but we can add a certain flourish and speed them on their way."

A Meeting of Minds

Iota Aumgae was a blaze at zenith, to Damia's left, glinting off her tiny personal capsule. Capella's light, from the right nadir, was a pulsing bluewhite. Starlight from the Milky Way bathed her, too, but the only sound was her even breathing as she allowed her mind to open fully to the mindless, echofreedom of deep space.

It was as if she could feel the separate cerebral muscles relaxing, expanding, just as her tall slender body went gradually limp. But it was primarily the mental relief that Damia sought so far away from her control Tower at the Federated Telepath and Teleport installation on Aurigae. It was the utter peace of deep space she required as anodyne to the constant demands of her position as Psionic Prime, responsible for the flow of commerce and communication in this Sector of Federated Worlds, the NineStar League. She was young, true, barely twenty; but age is relative, particularly when the need is great, and her mental talents were unusually mature. Furthermore, she was of the Raven Clan, bom into a tremendously talented family, carefully indoctrinated and trained to assume an executive role as the influence of Federated Worlds expanded into new star systems, needing more Prime Talents. Occasionally, even her young mind felt the strain and required respite from the insistent murmur of broadcasting thoughts that beat, beat, beat against hers: little minds which could not conceive the forces that Damia, Aurigan Prime, could marshall in gestalt with the mighty dynamos of the Tower. 24 With a flick of a finger, Damia screened out the overbrilliant starlight and opened her eyes. The softened stargleams, points of gem fire in the black of space, winked and pulsed at her. Idly she identified the familiar patterns they made, these silent friends. Somehow the petty grievances that built up inside her were gently dispersed as the overwhelming impersonality of cold nothingness brought them into proper perspective.

She could even forget her present preoccupation for a moment: forget how lonely she was; how she envied her brother, Larak, his loving, lovely wife and their new son; envied her mother the company of her husband and children; envied her Afra's...

Afra! What right had he to interfere, to reprimand her! His words still seared. "You've been getting an almighty huge vicarious charge out of peeking in on Larak and Jenna. Scared Jenna out of her wits, lurking in her mind while she was in labor! You leave them both alone!"

She was forced to admit herself at fault. But how had Afra known? Unless Larak had told him. She sighed. Yes, Larak would have known she was eavesdropping. Though he was the only T3 among her brothers and sisters, he had always been extremely sensitive to her mind touch. And she and Larak could always overwhelm any combination of the others, even if Jeran, Cera, and Ezro, all Tls, teamed up against them. Somehow, she switched mental gears, doubling the capability of other minds within her focus.

But it had humiliated her to be reamed by Afra. Well, better by that yelloweyed, greenskinned T4 Capellan than her father, acting in his capacity as Earth Prime. She rather hoped that her father had not learned of her breach of Tetiquette.

Odd, though, she hadn't heard as much as a whisper from Afra since then. It must be over seven months. He had listened in as she'd apologized to both Jenna and Larak, and then silence. He couldn't be that angry with her.

Damia diverted her thoughts away from Afra, and went through the ritual of muscular relaxation, of mental wipeout. She must be back in the Tower very soon.

In a way, the fact that she could handle Prime duties with no higher ratings than a T6 to assist had certain disadvantages. The Tower staff could handle only routine, planetary traffic, but she had to be on hand for all interstellar telepathic and teleportation commerce.

It would be wonderful to have a T3 with her: someone who could understand. Not someone... be honest with yourself out here in space, Damia. Some man. Only men shy away from you as if you'd developed Lynxsun cancers. And the only other unmarried Prime was her own brother, Jeran. Come to think about Jeran, the smug tone in his recent mindtouches as they exchanged cargoes and messages between Deneb and Auriga undoubtedly meant that he had found a likely mate, too.

It was no consolation to Damia that her mother had known and warned her of this intense, feminine loneliness. But Jeff Raven had appeared to breach the Rowan's tower and the Rowan had at least had Afra's company...

Afra! Why did her mind keep returning to him? Damia realized that she was grinding her teeth. She forced herself through the rituals again, sternly making specific thought dissipate until her mind drifted. And, in the course of that aimless drifting, an aura impinged on her roving consciousness. Startled—for nothing could be coming in from that far quarter of space—she tightened her mind into a seeking channel.

An aura. A mere wisp of the presence of something. Something... alien! Alien! Damia recomposed herself. She disciplined her mind to a pure, clear, uncluttered shaft. She touched the aura. Recognition of her touch, retreat, return. The aura was undeniably alien, but so faint that she would have doubted its existence except that her finely trained mind was not given to error. An exultation as hot as lust caused her blood to pound in her ears. She was not wrong. The trace was there. Taking a deep breath, she directed an arrowfine mental shout across the lightyears, nadirward, to the Earth Prime FT & T Tower, high above the Grand Canyon.

Alien spacecraft approaching our galaxy intercepting at Auriga, she informed Jeff Raven.

Damia, control, damn it, girl. Control, Jeff replied, keeping his own mental roar within tolerable bounds.

Sorry, Damia amended briefly without real contrition. Her father was capable of deflecting her most powerful thrust.

You are on a tight focus, I trust, with news like this? he asked in an official tone.

Of course, I am. But my first duty is to report to Earth Prime, isn't it?

Don't come over sweet innocence on me, missy. Now, give your full report.

Can't give a full one. The alien aura is barely detectible, four lightyears galactic northnortheast. Sector 2. I arrowed in once I heard the trace and it responded.

It responded— The aura.

You reported a spacecraft.

Father, how else could anything cross the intergalactic sea?

My dear child, in our galaxy, we have encountered many odd life forms that did not require light or oxygen to exist.

I say, spacecraft. I touched it.

Damia? and Jeff's tone was suspicious. Where are you?

I was only resting, she temporized, suddenly aware that she was doing something not quite circumspect.

Resting is permitted. But how far are you from the Tower? Jeff insisted.

A lightyear.

With only a T6 Station as control? Supposing, daughter, something happened to you? Supposing that alien aura decided to home in on you...

Oh, Dad, if I can't read more than an aura of Them, and they haven't changed position or rate since I informed you, they sure as hell don't pose any threat to me.

She carefully suppressed a giggle at her father's ex asperation. She very seldom got the better of either her father or Afra—she erased that name and went on— but it didn't keep her from trying.

All right, missy, show me, Jeff demanded, still severe.

She allowed him to join her mind completely as she led him out beyond the blaze of stars. She led him directly to the alien trace. The aura was palpable but so far away that only the extraordinary perception of two powerful minds could sense it. / caught anticipation, curiosity, Jeff told his daughter thoughtfully as he withdrew from the tight focus. And caution, too. Whatever it is, is approaching our galaxy.

I shall maintain a watch, Damia volunteered, unable to conceal her intense excitement at this momentous event.

Not at any time personally endangering yourself, Prime, Jeff abjured her, coloring the official concern with personal.

No, of course not. But I'd like to borrow Larak to maintain an augmented watch.

Larak's training T3s to augment old Gutman on Altair. The old man sleeps most of the time but he's the only Prime we have for that Sector until Eva's older, Jeff replied. I'll send you Afra. He'd be better anyhow.

Because Afra has already touched those aliens you and mother routed above Deneb twentyodd years ago? Damia laughed, covering up her reaction to Afra's coming with a jab at her father's recall.

Jeff chuckled amiably, giving her credit for a deep perception.

Well, I'd rather wait until Larak's free. 1 can just hear mother screaming at being deprived of Afra.

Damia, Jeff's tone crackled with disapproval. That is an irrational, childish and insulting remark. Repair your attitude. His tone altered. If you hadn't, at one time or another, intimidated every T2, 3 and 4 in the Federated Worlds, I could send someone else— And matchmake into the bargain? She tinged her thoughts with derision, and then advised smugly. Your dynastic plans will bear better fruit with Jeran. Only don't let him settle for anything less than a T4.

That was score two for her, she decided as she felt her father's startled pause.

You haven't been eavesdropping again, have you, Damia?

She parried that surprise with a quick. After Afra reamed me for that with Larak? Not bloody likely.

Oh, it was he who stopped you? Your mother thought it was Isthia.

The trouble with telepaths is sometimes they think too much, she remarked acidly, infuriated afresh to realize that her mother, also, knew of that incident.

Damia! Jeff's tone was unusually severe. Your mother is the only person in the galaxy who has any inkling of your problems...

Then why did she hand me over to Isthia to raise? Damia flashed back without thinking.

Because, my darling daughter, you were without doubt the most infuriating, incalcitrant, unmanageable fouryearold. Your mother was too ill with her pregnancy to keep track of you blithely teleporting all over the system. 1 sent you away, not your mother. It was not her decision and she resisted it every step of the way. I've told you that before. But you two are so bloody much alike...

Damia snorted. She was not the least bit like her mother. There was absolutely no resemblance between them. She was Jeff's daughter from her slender height to her black hair and vivid blue eyes. Ezro, yes, and Larak, too, took after the Rowan. But not she. Of course, Damia had to admit, her mother had an exceedingly strong and diverse psionic talent or she wouldn't be Callisto Prime, but Damia was just as strong, and she had the added advantage of that catalystic ability as well.

Well, Jeff was saying in a milder tone, you'll see it one day, my dear, and I, for one, shall be immensely relieved. Your mother and 1 love you very much and we're damned proud of the way you've taken over your official responsibilities on Auriga. Professionally I have no quarrel with you.

Damia basked in her father's praise. He didn't give it lightly. // you were only able to relate more to the people around you, he continued, spoiling the compliment, then added briskly, I'll send Afra on directest. I can trust his impartiality, and to Damia's amazement, her father chuckled.

She stabbed at his mind to find the basis for the amusement, but met a blankness as her father had turned his mind to some other problem.

"Impartiality? Afra?" The sound of her own voice in the little personal capsule startled her.

What on earth was that supposed to mean? Why would Afra's impartiality be trusted—above hers—in identifying or evaluating an alien aura?

But Afra was to come to Auriga.

After he had broken contact with Damia, Jeff did not immediately turn to other problems. He mulled over the subtler aspects of that vivid contact with his daughter. Damia's mind was as brilliant as Iota Aurigae, and about as stable as any active star's surface. He had caught the edges of her skillfully shielded reactions to several of his references. He was reassured to note growing evidence of emotional maturity, except where her mother and Afra were concerned.

Damia had unwittingly suppressed what Jeff recalled most vividly about the day he had sent her away to Isthia on Betelgeuse for fostering. It had been Afra the fouryearold Damia had clung to, cried for, not her mother. Jeff sighed. The decision to send Damia to Isthia had been one of the hardest he had ever had to make, personally and professionally. But Rowan had been extremely ill during her pregnancy with Larak, and Damia, coming early into her extraordinary mental powers, had made life pure hell for everyone in the Raven household: teleporting herself—and anything her fancies seized upon—indiscriminately around the system. Only Afra had any control over her, and he had had to be at Callisto Tower.

Under Isthia's calm, unruffled discipline, Damia had learned to control her waywardness. She became sincerely fond of Isthia. Strange that it was the Rowan whom Damia still blamed for that separation.

Rowan, Jeff called out to Callisto Tower, and sensed that his wife was resting as the interchanges on CalUsto's cargo decks filled from Earthside.

Her mind touched his gladly, with a delight that belied the fact they had breakfasted together a few hours earlier.

Open to me. Damia's made an alien contact. See it.

Alien? Near Damia? The fleeting maternal concern was quickly supplanted by professional curiosity as the Rowan scanned Jeff's recent experience beyond Auriga. Of course, Afra can go. But why on earth would Damia think Afra couldn't be reassigned as you see fit. He often has, but it's true I never get on as well with other T3's.

Too true, Jeff replied teasingly, to divert Rowan from scanning recent conversations too deeply, but if I didn't know Afra as well as 1 do...

Jeff Raven, there has never been a single thought between me and Afra that— Jeff laughed and she sputtered at him indignantly.

Actually, she continued, thoughtfully, I'd be very relieved to have Afra with Damia. I know how lonely it must be for her...

If she hadn't been so heavyhanded with every other high T young male, she wouldn't be lonely, Jeff said briskly, before Rowan got started on how she had failed her daughter. Now, is Afra in gestalt with you?

Right here. I'll leave you two men alone.

Refusing to placate her ruffled feelings, Jeff caressed her with a very affectionate thought before he felt Afra's mind touch his.

Are you sure you're only T3? he asked, a little surprised at the firmness in the Capellan's touch.

I'm in gestalt, after all, Afra replied, goodnaturedly. And, in the course of twentyodd years in the presence of the fine Raven touch, even a lowly T3 learns a few tricks. From the expression on the Rowan's face, I'd hazard that Damia is being discussed. What's she up to now?

Damia had just returned to Auriga when she heard the Rowan giving the Tower official warning of the transmission of a personal capsule.

Afra? Damia exclaimed, reaching back along her mother's touch to Callisto.

Damia! Afra said wamingly but too late.

Without waiting for the Rowan to flip the capsule halfway to Auriga, Damia blithely drew the carrier directly from Callisto, ignoring her mother's stunned and angry reaction to such an abuse of protocol.

She regretted her impulsive action almost immediately. But Afra's capsule was opening and he was swinging himself over the edge. She could not have missed his trenchant disapproval if she'd been a mere T15. He stood up, looking down at her, the same aloof, contained man. Now why, Damia wondered irritably, had she expected Afra to change? Had she? And would Afra condescend to comment on those changes in her?

She rose from her own capsule, instinctively standing very erect as if to minimize the differences in their heights. Tall as she was, inches taller than her mother, she came only to Afra's shoulder.

"You will apologize to your mother, Damia," Afra said, his unexpected tenor speaking voice a curious echo of his quiet mental tone. "Isthia taught you better manners even if we never could."

"You've been trying to lately, though, haven't you?" The retort came out before she could stop it. Would Afra always have this effect on her?

He cocked his head to one side and regarded her steadily. She sent a swift probe which he parried easily.

"You were distressing Jenna unnecessarily, Damia. She appealed to me as the nearest male of her Clan, and because she did not wish Jeff to know of your indiscretion."

"She chose well." Damia was so appalled at the waspishness of her tone that she extended her hand toward him apologetically.

She could feel him throw up his mental barriers and, for a second, she wondered if he might refuse what was, after all, the height of familiarity between telepaths. But his'hand rose smoothly to clasp hers, lightly, warmly, leaving her with the essential cool greencomfortablesecurity that was the physical/mental doubletouch of him.

Then, with a onesided smile, he bowed to indicate he was flattered but allowed a recollection of her as a nude baby on a bath towel to cross his public mind.

She made a face at him, and substituted Larak's son. Afra blandly put "her" back on the towel beside her nephew.

"All right," she laughed, "I'll behave."

"About time," he said with an affable grin, and looked beyond her to their surroundings.

He had seen Auriga in others' mindeyes but the amber sunlight was easier on his eyes than Earth's bright yellow, so that Auriga was not a dark world to him, but a restful one. The sweetscented breeze sweeping down from the high snowy mountain range was lightly moist and the atmosphere had a high oxygen content, exhilarating him.

"It's a lovely world you have here, Damia."

She smiled up at him, her blue eyes brilliant under the fringes of long black lashes.

"It's a lovely young vigorous world. Come see where I live," and she led the way from the landing stage to her dwelling.

The house perched on the high plateau above the noisy metropolis that was Auriga's major city, and Damia's Sector Headquarters. Its randomly sprawling newness had a vitality which the planned order of Earth lacked. Afra found the sight stimulating.

"It is, isn't it?" Damia agreed, following his surface thought. Then she directed his mind to her day's discovery, giving tha experience exactly as it had happened to her. "And the touch is unlike anything I've ever met."

"You certainly didn't expect it to be familiar, did you?" Afra asked in dry amusement.

"Just because they come from another galaxy doesn't mean they can't be humanoid," she replied.

Afra snorted in disgust and went into her main living room.

"I'll fix your favorite protein," she volunteered in one of her mercurial shifts.

"Oh, don't go to any trouble for me."

"No trouble at all." Mischievously, she allowed him to see her reaching for supplies from his home world lightyears away.

"Always the thoughtful hostess," he said, graciously inclining his head. "Have you estimated the alien's arrival?"

"I'll know better when I've had a chance to judge their relative speed," she said. "A day or two would give me some idea."

He watched her at the homey duties. Like most Tls, she enjoyed manual work and performed the daily housekeeping herself, without relying on mechanical services most households considered necessities. In a few minutes she set before him a perfectly cooked attractively served meal which he greeted perfunctorily.

"Can't I ever impress you?" she asked, half wistful, half sharp.

"Why should you want to?" he asked, affecting mild surprise. "I knew you from your first incoherent thought."

"Familiarity breeds contempt, huh?"

"Contempt, no. Understanding, yes. Particularly at our levels. And, of course, confusion, wherever you are," Afra replied. "Very good, just the way I like it," he added appreciatively, indicating his dinner.

Damia made a face at him across the table, and with a deliberate disregard for Tmanners, reached a portion of the saucesteeped meat into her mouth without spilling a drop. When Afra continued to ignore her, she sighed and picked up her fork.

"Shall I take over the regular workload, Damia, and leave you free for surveillance?"

"We don't have a heavy traffic right now. It's between harvests in this system, and manufacturing is slow for the next few months. The usual amount of tourists, though."

"How have you covered your absences with the staff?"

"Just told them I've been resting. I'll account for your presence as a preliminary survey for FT & T. Right? As if any 'of those lamebrains could 'search' me," she concluded contemptuously. 34 "So true," Afra replied, indicating in his public mind his professional respect for her.

She was not deaf to the irony and was about to reply hotly, but went back to eating rather than give him further satisfaction.

It was unprecedented, this contact with sentient life from what was probably another galaxy, yet for all her capriciousness, Damia had not permitted a hint of panic or her own inner excitement to escape. In that she heeded one of the basic tenets of her position. Panic enough was fomented within the complex Federated Worlds in the normal course of power struggles, revolutions, ecological problems, and pioneer exigencies. By common consent, instantaneous communications between planets no longer meant instant hysteria of worlds unconcerned with the emergency. Federated World Government handled the reports of all local disputes which were, by law, reported to them by FT & T Primes. Interstellar political or natural disasters were not added to the emotional burdens already suffered by populations. Primes exercised the option to disperse or retain reports which might affect minorities within their jurisdiction, but digests of all communications were, by law, available on request.

Damia propped her chin in her hands and looked earnestly at Afra across the table. She sighed heavily.

"You were right to call me to task for 'tasting' Larak and Jenna. But I did want to know what it would be like to be in love and then bring forth a baby."

"And... ?"

"Apart from the pain, I guess it's rewarding enough."

"You don't sound too sure."

Damia cocked her head and traced an involved pattern on the table with her index finger.

"It must be different to do it yourself, no matter how deeply you scan."

A trace thought behind her shield, called forth by her remark, sent through Afra a bolt of terror which he barely managed to contain. She was unconsciously censoring, and it had to do with the alien aura and with her own desire for the experience of motherhood. But trace thought it was, and he had only that onemillisecond impression, tantalizing, terrorizing.

"Why, Afra, why?" Damia continued, unaware of the reaction she had produced in him, her own mind absorbed in selfpity. She launched herself physically from the table in one lightning move, and stood at the window wall, her back as expressive of her frustration and bitterness as her mind. "Why am I a loner? The Rowan found Jeff, but where, when will I find someone?"

"Damia, you've met every psionic prospect Talent above Class 7 in the NineStar League."

"Them," she dismissed those candidates scornfully.

"Young Nicos, the T5 working with Jeran on Deneb, was mighty taken with you. Calm down a bit—"

"Nicos!" Damia's eyes flashed blue fire. "That postadolescent mess! Why, it'd be five or six years before he's even presentable."

Afra was no stranger to such dismissals. He'd heard many since the time Damia had begun to be interested in the opposite sex as a precocious adolescent. There had been times when he wished he had followed his own deephidden desire. But he had given a great deal of thought to the variables, and knew that he could only wait. He knew how hard it must be for Damia to watch others pairing off, achieving the enviable total accord that telepaths enjoyed, and for which she was so eager. Her very brilliance and beauty caused many otherwise willing mates to shy away. Usually, she would talk herself out of her mood, but tonight there was a new undercurrent that was dangerous in its intensity.

"Is that why you so eagerly await the arrival of the aliens?" Afra said in a soft drawl, deliberately leaching all emotion out of his words. "On the off chance they're biologically compatible? Do you envision your soul mate winging across the void to you?"

She whirled to face him, her eyes wide with rage.

"Don't you taunt me, Afra," she said in a hoarse whisper.

He inclined his head in apology.

"Better get some sleep, Damia," he said gently, and gave her a little mental push toward her bedroom.

"You're right. I am tired, Afra, and excited, and silly. It's just... just that sometimes I feel like nothing more than a useful mental stevedore: not a person at all. Then this happens... and I... I have the fantastic chance to establish communication with alien minds..."

Again Afra caught the unmistakable and unconscious suppression of a thought within the maelstrom of her weariness.

Damia turned on her heel and left the room. Afra watched the sunset turn the plateau a deep tangerine, then diminish in the east. Brooding over the evening's conversation, he waited until the roiling activity of Damia's mind subsided into the even beat of sleep. Then he, too, went to bed. Carefully, just as he was on the edge of sleep, he reinforced his mental screens so that none of his longing for her would escape. He wondered, in that honest interval between consciousness and dreaming, if he would have enough strength left to cope with a third generation of Raven women.

The next day they initiated the new routine. Damia handled the longdistance items first. Then after the incoming workload had been sorted out and there were no more demands on her talent, she departed into space, to "rest," leaving Afra to deal with the remaining tasks.

Although the function of a Prime was complex, a twominute mental briefing by Damia supplied Afra with the background of immediate problems and all the procedures peculiar to that station. The memory bank would give any additional information. When the focal talents of the gestalt were exchanged, not even onehalf a beat of the pulse of the Aurigean Sector Headquarters was missed. The allocation of duties pleased Afra because it. would give him the opportunity to use the gestalt of the Station to reach Jeff without Damia knowing. She would be too busy "reaching" for the alien touch to be aware of Afra. The temporary breach of her trust in him was offset by the absolving knowledge of its necessity.

In terms of intergalactic distances, the aliens approached at a snail's pace: by interstellar references, faster than the speed of light. A week passed and then one evening Damia returned from her daily "rest" bursting with news. She moved from the landing area right into the living room, where Afra was lounging.

"I made individual contact," she cried. "And what a mind!" She was so excited that she didn't notice the flare of jealousy which Afra couldn't suppress. "And what a surprise he got," she went on.

From the moment she had entered, Afra had known that the mind was male.

"A Prime talent?" he asked, counterfeiting a show of genuine interest.

"I can't assess it. He's so... different," she exclaimed, her eyes shining and her mental aura dazzling with her success. "He fades and then returns. The distance is immense, and there isn't much definition in the thoughts. I can only reach the surface." Damia threw herself onto the long couch. "I'm exhausted. I shall have to sleep before I can reach Jeff with the news. I don't dare use the station."

Afra agreed readily, waiting until she relaxed into sleep. Ethics aside, he tried to reach this experience in her mind below the emotional level, only to find himself overwhelmed by the subjective. Damia was treating herself to a high emotional kick! Afra was afraid for her, with a fear deeper than any he had ever touched personally or vicariously. Afra withdrew troubled. She had better calm down and start acting like a Prime when she woke, instead of a giddy girl. If she didn't, he'd push the panic button himself.

After several hours' sleep, Damia's mental pyrotechnics were calmer. She "reached" Jeff with a professional report of the contact, only just a trifle high. When she had finished broadcasting, Jeff got a private thought to Afra but Afra could only confirm Damia's report. He did not yet comment on his vague forebodings.

The next day, Damia tossed off her necessary work as fast as she could, then went into space. And Afra waited as he had been waiting for Damia for years. She returned so shining from the second encounter, Afra had to clamp an icy hold over his mind.

The third morning, as Damia sat in the control tower, she worked' with such haste Afra reprimanded her. She corrected herself, gaily, making far too light of her mistake, and then, eagerly, she propelled herself out toward the rendezvous. When she returned that evening so tired that she reeled into the living room, Afra took command.

"I'm going with you tomorrow, Damia," he said firmly.

"What for?" She sat bolt upright to glare at him.

"You forget that I have a direct order from Earth Prime to check the aura of these aliens. You've no way of knowing this isn't a reinvasion by the same entities that attacked Deneb twenty years ago."

"Sodan said they'd had no previous contact with any sentients," she said, half angry.

"Sodan?"

"That is how he identifies himself," she said with smug complacency. She lay back on the couch, smiling up at Afra.

It disturbed him to know that this entity had a name. It made the alien seem too human. Nor could Afra quite reason away the tenderness with which Damia spoke that name.

"Good enough," Afra said, with an indifference he didn't feel. "However, you don't need to introduce me formally. All I need is to check on the aura. I'll know in an instant if there's any familiarity. I won't jeopardize his confidence in your touch. He'll never know I've been there." Afra yawned.

"Why are you tired?"

"I've been stevedoring all day," he said with a malicious grin.

The remark had the desired effect of infuriating Damia. The very fact that he could so easily divert her conclusively proved to Afra that her emotions were unhealthily involved. It no longer mattered whether this Sodan was of the race that Jeff and the Rowan had fought. He was a menace in himself.

Somehow Afra got through the evening without a hint of his inner absorption spilling over. Damia, reliving the success of her day, wasn't listening to anything but her own thoughts.

The next day, after the necessary work was completed, Damia and Afra both took to their personal capsules. Afra followed Damia's thrust and held him self silently as she reached the area where she could touch the aura of Sodan. Damia then linked Afra and carried his mind to the alien ship. As soon as the alien touch impinged on Afra's awareness, much was suddenly clear to him: much seen, and worse, much unseen.

What Damia could not, would not, or did not see justified Afra's nagging presentiment of danger. Nothing out of Sedan's mind was visible: and nothing beyond his public mind was touchable. The alien had a very powerful brain. As a quiescent eavesdropper, Afra could not probe, but he widened his own sensitivity to its limit and the impressions he received were as unreassuring as his increasingly stronger intuition of disaster.

It was patent that this Sodan was not of the previous invasion species: that he had been traveling for an unspecifiable length of time far in excess of two Earth decades.

It would not occur to Damia that Afra would linger once he had established his facts. But Afra did linger, discovering other disturbing things. Sedan's mind, undeniably brilliant, was nevertheless augmented. Afra couldn't perceive whether Sodan was the focus for other minds on the ship or in gestalt with the ship's power source. Straining to his limit without revealing himself, Afra tried to pierce the visual screen or, at least, the aural one. All he received was a low stereo babble of mechanical activity, and the bum of heavy elements.

Defeated, Afra withdrew, leaving Sodan and Damia to exchange thoughts that he had to admit were the ploys of courtship. He returned to Auriga and lay in the Tower couch, summoning up the energy to call. Jeff Raven had moved young Larak nearer to Auriga to facilitate subrosa communications. It was not, Afra assured himself, that Damia had deliberately hidden anything in her reports to himself or to Jeff: she was unaware that her usually keen perceptions were fuddled and distorted by her emotional involvement:^ she who had prided herself on her ability to assess dispassionately any emotionally charged incident.

Larak, Afra called, drawing heavily on the gestalt and projecting his own mental/physical concept of Larak to aid him in reaching the mind.

Man, you're beat, Larak came back, sharp, clear green.

Larak, relay back to Jeff that this Sodan...

It's got a name?

It's got more than that and Damia is responding on a very high emotional level, Afra sighed heavily. Relay back to Jeff that I want him and the Rowan to remain on call at all times to me. I consider this an emergency. Get yourself, pushed out here as soon as you can relay that message. I'll need you here so we can get through to Prime when we need to without going through Station or Damia.

Coming, Larak responded crisply.

Afra leaned back in the couch and flicked off the generators, thanking the paradox that allowed Damia to run a Station on low T ratings; she would be unable to catch what he had just transmitted.

He would have given much to have been able to handle the Sodan mind by himself, without having to call on other Primes. All through Damia's life, Afra had been able to cope with her mercurial tempers and to direct her restless energies. And though his recent complete withdrawal from her had been painfully calculated, it meant that now he could neither further his cause, nor divert Damia from her headlong immersion in romance. Nor was he able to challenge Sodan and remove that competition.

"Galloping gronites, you look like a rough ride on a long ellipse comet," was Larak's cheery greeting as he bounced into the Tower.

"Your description is remarkably apt," Afra replied grimly, and gripped Larak's shoulder to convey the one impression he had not included in the broadcast.

Love has touched our fair sister at last, huW. Larak murmured sympathetically. And with a total alien.

A very dangerous alien, unfortunately, Afra added. "There is fissionable material aboard, mighty heavy stuff for a ship bound on an ostensibly peaceful exploratory mission. Heavy enough to suspect whoever gave Sodan his mission knew our civilization is on an advanced level."

"More's the pity," Larak agreed thoughtfully, perching on the edge of the console. "Could you sense any communications with his own people?"

"Tremendous power source in the ship. Tremendous, but by the mighty atom, Larak, you can't get past the public mind. Anyhow, I couldn't. And Damia hasn't." Afra rose, paced restlessly back and forth in the narrow Tower. "Then it's possible he has informed them of the contact?" "I can't tell."

Larak held Afra's glance, and then sighed. "It'll be a shame to have to destroy him," he said slowly.

"Ha! We'll be lucky if we can," Afra replied. "Oh, yes, Larak, that mind is the equal, if not the superior, of Damia's. It could destroy... all of us."

"Then we must act quickly before any suspicion leaks to Damia," Larak said in sudden resolution.

Together the two flicked on the generators and soberly presented to Jeff and the Rowan the action they deemed advisable.

But are we sure the evasions are deliberate? Maybe this alien is exercising caution? I would if I met a mind in outer space, the Rowan said in argument. She met absolute resistance to her position. Why can't we destroy him then? Why must we ask her to do it? She spoke as Damia's mother, not Callisto Prime.

For one thing, we can't reach that far without her. Nor can we draw, as Damia can, without prearrangement on other Talent reserves, Jeff replied. We'll have to show her how dangerous Sodan is, he added, disliking this as much as any of them.

Each day Damia returns to Auriga a little more tired than the previous one, Afra said slowly. I suspect that he realized he must drain her before she suspects his intentions.

Playing with her? The Rowan was angry now.

Don't be silly, mother, Larak said derisively.

Not in that sense. Rowan, Afra answered her. ; suspect Damia was as much a surprise to him as he has been to her.

Hurry, Larak cautioned him. She's returning. And boy, is she exhausted!

Afra suppressed a feeling of annoyance that the curious childhood link between Damia and Larak gave him the edge in sensing Damia's return. He turned his mind to the debate, as decision and strategy were settled in the moment before Damia's capsule landed back on Auriga.

"Larak. I thought I felt you near," she cried happily as she saw her brother, the picture of casual relaxation, perched on the edge of the console.

"Just thought? You usually know," he said, crowing with boyish delight. "This alien sure has got you wrapped up and tied like a present. See how the mighty have fallen."

When Damia flushed, Larak roared with laughter.

"I've got to meet this guy," he said.

"I've always felt that I was building experience and training for one special reason," Damia said, her eyes shining, "and now I know what it is!"

"The whole Sector will know in a moment if you don't lower your 'voice,'" Afra said, sharply, to give Larak a chance to control the shock the boy was feeling as he witnessed Damia's exultation.

Resentfully, Damia dampered her emotional outpouring.

"I suppose you arrived with an appetite like a mule," she said sourly.

Larak's face was a study in innocent hurt.

"I'm a growing boy, and while you're out courting, Afra's getting overworked, and leaner and hungrier."

Damia looked guiltily at Afra.

"You do look tired," she said with concern. "Let's all push over to the house and have dinner. Larak, why are you here?"

"Oh, Dad wants Afra to pinchhit on Procyon. Two high T's are down with one of the local viruses and traffic is backing up. Say, what's this alien ship like? Crew or full automation for a void trek?"

Her hand poised over the cooking dials, Damia hesitated. She looked at her brother blankly.

"Oh, you men are all alike. Details, details!" "Well, sure," Larak replied. "But if details like that bore you, they fascinate me. I'll ask him myself." "You can't reach that far!" "I planned to hop a ride with you tomorrow." Damia hesitated, looking for assistance from Afra, who shrugged noncommittally.

"Oh, for glory's sake, Damia. This is no time to be coy," her brother said.

"I'm not being coy!" she exploded. "It's just that... just that..."

"Who're you kidding?" Larak wanted to know, letting his temper rise with hers. "You're gone on this guy, and how do you know he's even anything resembling a man?"

"His is a true mind, brilliant and powerful," she said haughtily.

"That's great for fireside chats, but no damned good in bed."

Damia reddened, half with fury and indignation, and half with sudden virginal embarrassment at her brother's accurate thrust.

"You're insufferable. If it weren't for me, we wouldn't have been warned at all."

"Warned?" Afra leapt on the choice of word. Perhaps she was not as completely bedazzled as they'd thought.

"Of this momentous meeting," she went on, oblivious to the implication. "You've touched him, Afra. Don't you agree?"

"That it's a brilliant mind? Yes," and Afra nodded judiciously.

Damia caught his sour undertone. "Oh, you... you're jealous, that's all." And then she frowned, looking at Afra with sudden suspicion.

"Hey, you're letting my dinner bum," Larak said, pointing.

"And you say that women gossip," Damia exclaimed, quickly lifting two pans from the heat. "It's a mercy nothing is burned."

They ate in strained silence, Larak and Afra concentrating hard to'maintain a convincing surface of thought. They hardly needed to because Damia went off into her own private reverie, ignoring them completely.

"You may be infatuated with this Sodan," Larak said, "but it doesn't affect your cooking. Doesn't even taste scorched."

Too much a woman not to be pleased by even a brother's praise, Damia relaxed.

"He isn't an advance scout for a second invasion force, I gather," Larak addressed Afra.

"No. In the very brief touch I had," Afra replied quickly, "he's been traveling much longer than twenty years."

Larak whistled appreciatively, just as if he didn't know this already.

"Did you take a look around at the details my sweet sister is uninterested in?" he asked.

"No. There were no obvious visual images and I was only concerned with recognition."

"He has eyes," Damia replied loyally. "We've discussed the concept of sight. You must take into consideration that he is also the controller of the ship, and the drain on his energies reaching me and managing his crew and ship must be enormous. It certainly is on me."

"Yeah. You need your beauty sleep—bad," said Larak.

"I'd like to see you do half as well."

"Children! Cut it out!" Afra intervened authoritatively.

Larak and Damia glared at each other, but the long habit of obeying Afra held.

"Both of you, get to bed," he added. "Snarling at each other in the worst example of sibling rivalry I've seen since you returned from Isthia's an opinionated tenyearold. Makes me wonder how your father dared put you in as Aurigan Prime."

"If there's anything that annoys me more than Larak acting fraternal, it's you, Afra, making like the older generation." She spoke coolly, but her flare of temper had subsided.

Afra shrugged, relieved that his diversion had worked before Larak inadvertently showed Damia why he was probing these particular areas.

T "At least, this generation's representative has sense enough to go to bed when he's out on his feet," he muttered. As he passed Larak, the boy winked.

The next morning at breakfast, no one looked as if he had slept well. Afra kept a surface rumble going in his mind to mask both tension and anxiety. Larak delivered a running monologue on his son. Damia was also closely shielding. When they reached the Tower, Damia took the most cursory glance at Station business, and said "I'll take you out now, Larak."

"Fine. Dad wants Afra back at Callisto tonight."

Damia hesitated. "Afra had better come along, then, for a second look around." She looked challengingly at Afra, who shrugged.

This was, however, unexpected luck. Afra had thought he might have to follow Larak and Damia surreptitiously. He switched the boosters up to the top, and signaled Damia and Larak to get into their capsules. While they did so, he called Jeff and the Rowan to stand by, then settled into his own shell, reassured by their sustaining presence in his mind.

Is there any possible chance we're wrong about Sedan's intentions, or the depth of Damia's emotional commitment? pleaded the Rowan.

Less and less, Afra told her, grimly. We'll know soon for certain. Larak needled her last night. She'll have to check to make sure he's wrong.

Then he touched Damia and Larak, and all three went the mere halflight further to the ship and Sodan.

You have rested well and are strong today, was the cool greeting after an instant's welcoming flash.

Damia instinctively covered against the discovery of her coriders, but the greeting stuck in her mind. There was the hint that Sodan did not wish her so strong, and yet a tinge of relief colored that fleck of thought.

You come nearer to physical contact with us every day, she began.

Us? Sodan queried.

My planet, my people... me.

I'm only interested in you, he replied.

But my people will be interested in you, she parried unable to censor from Afra and Larak the pleasure she felt in his compliment.

There are many people on your planets? he asked.

Planet.

At least, Afra concluded, she remembered to be politically discreet.

Doesn't your sun have several lifesupporting satellites?

That is why I must know more about your physical requirements. Damia replied smoothly. After all, my home world may not have the proper atmosphere...

My physical wants are attended to, Sodan replied coldly, with a slight emphasis on the second word.

It was the Rowan who caught the infinitesimal break in his shielding, and simultaneously all four minds stabbed at the area to lay it bare. Sodan, torn by this powerful invasion, lashed back in selfdefense with a vicious blow at Damia, whom he thought perpetrated the attack.

No, no! Not I, Sodan, she screamed. Larak, what are you doing?

Afra struggled frantically to become the focus of the other minds, only to find himself caught in Larak's mind with the Rowan and Jeff, as the curious bond between brother and sister snapped into effect.

He must be destroyed before he can destroy you, Damia, the Larakfocus said, tinging its inexorable decision with the regret it felt.

No! I love him. His mind is so brilliant, cried Damia, pitting her own strength against her peers to defend her lover. The Larakfocus staggered back, unable to prosecute and attack against such a combination.

Damia, he is only a mind!

Stunned, Damia hestitated, and the Larakfocus plunged forward again, battering against the shielded Sodan.

Only mind? She gasped, begging Sodan to deny it.

Why no vision? Why no sound? He is only a brain, devoid of all except remembered emotion. He is bound here to destroy. Feel the heavy stuff in the ship? Is that customary for a peaceful scouting expedition?

You're against me, against me. No one wants me to be happy, cried Damia, suddenly aware, terribly aware of her loving blindness. He loves me. I love him.

If he has nothing to hide, he will let you see, the Larakfocus continued implacably.

Let me see you, Sodan. Damia was pleading, desperately, hopefully.

For what seemed an eternity, Sodan hesitated. // / could, I would, he said softly and with honest regret.

Like a vengeful sword, her mind, freed from the infatuation Sodan had artfully fostered, gathered and sprang with the others to destroy the aggressor. For Damia now understood the purpose behind Sedan's impersonality. The battle was waged in the tremendous space between two heartbeats. Sodan, his mind fortified by the nuclear power of his ship, was stronger than their conservative estimates. And almost negligently, he held the Larakfocus at bay, his mind laughing at what he considered their puny efforts.

Then Damia's pressure increased as she stripped away the veil of her romantic illusions to align herself with the Larakfocus to defend her Sector. Sodan called for more power within himself. The scorching blaze that fed through Damia's growing catalystic mind flashed through and stripped him bare, lashing beyond to trigger the atoms of the ship into instability. Involuntarily, and for a microsecond, Sedan's past nickered.

Once, generations ago, embodied, he had breathed an alien air, walked an alien road; until his brain had been chosen to undertake the incredible enterprise of crossing the galactic rift.

In my fashion have I loved you, he cried to Damia as he felt her reach the fuel mass. But you never loved me, he added with intense surprise as her mind, vulnerable in the instant of that massive thrust, was open to him. And he shall not have you either!

With his last strength, Sodan sent out one final jealous mental blast just as the ship exploded.

Frantically, even as she felt herself blacking out from the tremendous drain on her resources, Damia tried to deflect that blow.. As a kingpin flattens a row of its fellows, so Sedan's blast, striking through the Larakfocus, caused a wave of mental agony to roll backward to Auriga where Station personnel grabbed at their skulls in anguish, to Earth and Callisto where Tratings cringed in pain, and on to Deneb and even Altair. Horrified crews found Jeffrey Raven and the Rowan unconscious in their Tower couches. Jeran, head aching, was hastily summoned, for FT & T command devolved to him in the emergency. Jeran took time out to assure himself that with sufficient rest his parents would recover, then he informed the Federated World Government of the event. He was requested to proceed with the defensive fleet to Auriga.

Isthia appeared at Earth Headquarters at his urgent bidding and, with her help, he was able to extract gently from Jeff's taxed mind the position of the three personal shells.

As they approached the orbit, they could "hear" nothing.

It is possible, Isthia said hopefully as they could find no discernible aura, that all three have gone into very deep shock. The power in Damia's final thrust!

Damia cannot be dead, Jeran tried to convince himself. Sodan may have been powerful, but is there a Trating in the galaxy who didn't feel her hit him? We cannot lose her! He had already resigned himself to other losses.

"Ah!" Isthia gave a sharp gasp. 7 have them.

Jeran reached with her, signaling the flagship's T3 to assist.

"She's alive," he cried in relief. / thought I felt them all die.

"Afra lives, too, but he's very faint. Larak..." and Isthia's voice faded. Why did the focus have to snap through him?

They brought Afra's capsule in first, and Jeran, who was at the head as the shell was opened, pressed fearful hands against the man's temples. Afra's body was drawn up in the fetal position of complete withdrawal.

"He's badly hurt, Isthia. God, will we save him? Should we, if he'll be psionically numb for the rest of his life?"

Isthia moved his hands aside, and applied her own, her touch naturally more delicate than Jeran's.

"I can't tell more than that he wants to die. The spark of life is very faint." She gave rapid mental orders to the medics standing by so that, within seconds, Afra's body was receiving emergency injections to stimulate the failing life signs.

Divorce your emotions Jeran, Isthia told him sharply. Help me reach him. He wants to die. We must pull him back.

Jeran shook himself and, holding his breath, placed his hands above Isthia's on Afra's head.

Together they probed, ignoring the mental anguish they experienced at having to touch so torn a mind. Uppermost was the thought that both Larak and Afra had shared: Sodan striking at them and Damia, exhausted, trying to block it.

He'll kill her, he'll kill her, was the repeated cry of terror, a curious melding of both Larak and Afra, swirling in the pain of Afra's mind. No, Damia. Don't try. I waited too long. No, Damia. Then the enigmatic sequence was repeated.

Damia lives, Damia lives, Jeran and Isthia told him.

Damia lives, damia lives damia lives, whispered the essence of Afra.

Isthia caught Jeran's eyes with surprised confusion. Hopeful now, they reinforced the will to live.

Afra, Damia lives. She rests. She waits for you, Isthia murmured soothingly.

Sleep, Afra, rest. Damia lives, Jeran urged.

Damia lives? Damia lives!

With a shudder, Afra's body untwisted from the fetal curl. For one terrifying moment, he was still. Gasping, Isthia dipped way down into the suddenly tranquil mind only to be reassured that Afra had merely slipped into deep sleep.

"He's very badly hurt, Jeran," Isthia admitted sadly as they watched the medics wheel Afra away to a tightly shielded room.

They opened Damia's capsule together. She lay on her side, looking very young, but there were marks that showed the effects of that meeting of minds. She had bitten through her underlip and a trickle of blood ran in a scarlet line across her cheek. Her fingernails had cut into her palms when she had clenched her fists and her face was streaked with tears.

With infinite compassion, Isthia turned the girl onto her back and laid both her hands lightly on Damia's temples.

I can't reach them. I can't get there in time. I hurt. I've got to try. I hurt. Oh, will I lose them both? Isthia could hear the words faintly, deep in the tired mind.

With a sigh of relief, Isthia straightened.

Is she badly burned? Jeran asked impatiently, having waited outside Isthia's contact but aware it had been made.

Not burned but deeply hurt on several levels. Damia's been cut down to size, Isthia remarked ruefully, the terrible way only the very bright and confident are. She'll never forget that she underestimated Sedan's potential because she became infatuated with him.

For all of that, if she hadn't touched him first, where would we be with such a menace zeroing from space?

Isthia waved that aside as of incidental importance.

That won't matter to Damia, Jeran. Her initial lapse of judgment caused Larak's death and has seriously injured Afra.

Merciful God, Isthia, once the attack on Sodan began, nothing could have saved Larak, no matter where he was in the focusmind. Death is far kinder than being burned out. She's not to blame.

Isthia shook her head sadly. No, she isn't to blame and I hope it never occurs to her that, in the crisis, instinct overrode reason and it was Afra she struggled to save.

Afra? What in hell? asked Jeran before he followed Isthia's thought to its source. So that's why Sodan struck to kill. He was after Afra.

He stepped back as Isthia signaled to the medics to administer deepsleep drugs and intravenous nourishment to Damia.

With great reluctance they turned to Larak's silent shell. Because they had to, they opened it and saw with some little relief that there was no mark of his ?1 passing on the young face. A curiously surprised smile lingered on his lips.

Isthia turned away in tears and Jeran, too numb to display his own sorrow, put his arm around her to lead her away.

"Sir," the captain of the ship said respectfully when they entered the control room, "we have the location of the alien ship debris. Permission to recover fragments?"

"Permission granted. Isthia and I will return to the Tower."

"Very good, sir," the captain said, and stiffened to a rigid attention. The unashamed tears in his eyes and his very crisp salute expressed wordlessly his pride, his sympathy, and his sorrow.

Struggling against a will determined to keep her asleep, Damia fought her way to semiconsciousness.

"I can't keep her under. She's resisting," a remote voice called to someone.

As distant as the sound was, like a far echo in a subterranean cavern, each syllable fell like a hammer on her exposed nerves. Sobbing, Damia struggled for consciousness, sanity, and a release from her agony. She couldn't seem to trigger the reflexes that would divert pain, and an effort to call Afra to help her met with not only the resistance of increased agony but a vast blankness. Her mind was as stiff as iron, holding each thought firmly to it as though magnetized.

"Damia, do not reach. Do not use your mind," a voice said in her ear. The sound was like a blessing and the reassurance it gave her wavering sanity was reinforced by the touch of... Isthia's hands on hers.

Damia focused her eyes on the woman's face and clutched Isthia's hands to her temples in an unconscious plea for relief of pain.

"What happened? Why can't I control my head?" cried Damia, tears of weakness streaming down her face.

"You overreached yourself, destroying Sodan," Isthia said.

"I can't remember," Damia groaned, blinking away the tears so she could at least see clearly. 52 "Every rating in FT & T does."

"Oh, my head. It's all a blank and there's something I have got to do and I can't remember what it is."

"You will, you will. But you're very tired, dear," Isthia said crooningly as she stroked her forehead with cool hands. Each caress seemed to lessen the terrible pain.

Damia felt the coolness of an injection pop into her arm.

"I'm putting you back to sleep, Damia. We're very proud of you but you must allow your mind to heal in sleep." " 'Great nature's second course, that knits the ravelled 'sleeve of care.' What's knitting, Isthia? I've never known," Damia heard herself babbling with a cool scalliony taste in her throat as the drug spread.

Again, after what seemed no passage of time at all, Damia was inexorably forced to consciousness by her indefinable but relentless need.

"I can't understand it," came Isthia's voice. This time it did not reverberate across Damia's pained mind like tympany in a small room. "I gave her enough to put a city to sleep."

"She's worrying at something and probably won't rest until she's resolved it. Let's wake her up and get the agony over."

Damia forced her mind to concentrate on identifying the second voice. With a grateful smile she labelled it "Jeff." She felt her face gently slapped and, opening her eyes, saw Jeff's face swimming out of the blurred mass about her.

"Jeff," she pleaded, not because he had slapped her but because she had to make him understand.

"Dear Damia," he said with such loving pride she almost lost the tenuous thought she tried to hold from him.

Her body strained with the effort to reach out only a few inches a mind that once had blithely coursed lightyears, but she soon managed to communicate her crime. / burned out Larak and Afra. I killed them. I linked ?3 to the Larakfocus and killed them to destroy Sodan.

I saved myself and killed them.

Behind Jeff she heard Rowan's cry and Isthia's exclamation.

"No, no," Jeff said gently, shaking his head. He placed her hands on his forehead to let her feel the honesty of his denial. "In the first place, you couldn't. You don't use others. You sort of shift gears into high speed to make other minds work on a higher level. You drew power from the Larakfocus to destroy Sodan, yes. But the killing thrust was yours, Damia; you were the only one capable of doing it. And every Trating in the Federated Worlds will vouch for that. Your touch, my dear, is indescribable. Further, without you to throw us into high gear, Sodan could have destroyed every Prime in FT & T."

Damia heard an approving, admiring murmur from Rowan.

"Will my touch come back? I can't feel anything," and in spite of her control Damia's chin quivered and she started to sob with fear.

"Of course it'll come back, dear," said the Rowan, who elbowed Jeff aside to kneel by her daughter and stroke her hair tenderly.

"You'd better go knit some more sleeves of ravelled care," Isthia suggested with therapeutic asperity. "You knit like this," and Isthia inserted a visual demonstration of the technique of knitting into Damia's mind. It was an adroit change of subject, but Damia, with a flash return of perception, saw the three were evading her.

"I must be told what has happened," she demanded imperiously. A wisp of memory nagged at her and she caught it. "I remember. Sodan made one last thrust." She closed her eyes against that recall, remembering too, that she had tried to intercept it and, "Larak's dead," she said in a flat voice. "And Afra. I couldn't shield in time."

"Afra lives," the Rowan said.

"But Larak? Why Larak?" Damia demanded, desperately striving to touch what she felt they must still be hiding from her., "Larak was the focus," Rowan said softly, knowing, too, that Damia would never absolve herself of her brother's death. "Afra was supposed to be the focus, being the experienced mind, but the old bond between you and Larak snapped into effect. You tried to shield Larak, but his mind was too unskilled to draw help from you. Jeff and I felt it because we were part of the focus, too, and we tried to help divert it. We could cushion only Afra in time. Sedan's was a very powerful mind."

Damia looked from her mother to her father and knew that that much was true. But another reservation hovered in their eyes...

"You're still hiding something," she insisted, fighting with exhaustion. "Where's Afra?"

"Okay, skeptic," Jeff said, lifting her into his arms. "Though why his snores haven't kept you awake, I don't know."

He carried her down the hall. Pausing at an open door, he swung her around so she could see into the room. A night light hung over the bed, illuminating Afra's quiet face, deeply lined with fatigue and pain. Denying even the physical evidence, Damia reached out, touching just enough for reassurance the pained mental rumble that meant Afra still inhabited his body.

"Damia, don't do that again," Jeff said, carrying her back to her room.

"I won't but I had to," she replied, her head ballooning with agony.

"And we'll see you don't again until you're well enough. Out you go, missy," and she slid into blackness.

An insistent whisper nibbled at the corners of her awareness and roused Damia from restoring sleep. Cringing in anticipation of the return of pain, she was mildly surprised to feel only the faintest discomfort. Experimentally, Damia pushed a depressant on the ache and that, too, disappeared. Unutterably pleased by her success, she sat up in bed. It was night and she was in her family's home. She stretched until a cramp caught her in the side.

Heavens, hasn't anyone moved me in months? she asked herself, noting that her mental tone was firm. She lay back in bed, deliberating. Poor Damia, she said in a selfderisive tone, ever since that encounter with that dreadful mindalien, she's been nothing but a T4, T9? T3? Damia tried out the different grades for size and then discarded them all, along with her histrionics.

You idiot, you'll never know till you try.

Tentatively, without apparent effort, she reached out and counted the pulses of three... no four, sleepers. Afra's was the faint one. But, Damia realized in calm triumph, it was there. Which brought her face to face with the second fact.

She slid from her bed to stand by the window. Beyond the lawn of evergrass, beyond the little lake, to the copse of evergreens her glance traveled. And stopped. Instinct told her that Larak was buried there and the thought of Larak buried and his touch forever gone broke her. She wept in loneliness, biting her knuckles and pressing her arms tightly into her breasts to muffle the sound of her mourning.

Out of the night, out of the stillness, the whisper tugged at her again. She stifled her tears to listen, trying to identify that sliver of sound. It faded before she caught it.

Resolutely now, she laid her sorrow gently in her deepest soul, a part of her but apart forever. No matter what Jeff and Rowan said, she had caused Larak's death and maimed Afra. Had she been less preoccupied, less selfcentered, she would not have been so dazzled by the fancy that Sodan was her Prince Charming, her knight in cylindrical armor.

Such a pitiful thing she was: a spoiled, rottenhearted child, demanding a new toy to dispel boredom when all the time...

The whisper again, fainter, surer. With a startled cry of joy, Damia whirled from her room, running on light feet down the hall. Catching at the door frame to brake her headlong flight, she hesitated on the threshold of Afra's room.

She caught her breath as she realized that Afra was sitting up. He was looking at her with a smile of disbelief on his face.

"You've been calling me," she whispered, halfquestioning, halfstating.

"In a lamebrained way," he replied. "I can't seem to reach beyond the edge of the bed."

"Don't try. It hurts," she said quickly, stepping into the room to pause shyly at the foot of the bed.

Afra grimaced, rubbing his forehead. "I know it hurts but I can't seem to find any balance in my skull," he confessed, his voice uneven, worried.

"May I?" she asked formally, unexpectedly timid with him.

Closing his eyes, Afra nodded.

Sitting down cautiously, Damia lightly laid her fingertips to his temples, and touched his mind as delicately as she knew how. Afra stiffened with pain and Damia quickly established a block, spreading it over the damaged edges. Resolutely, regardless of the cost to her own recent recovery, she drew away the pain, laying in the tender areas a healing mental anesthesia. Jealousy, she noticed someone else had been doing the same thing.

Isthia... has... a... delicate... touch... too. He sent the thought carefully, slowly.

"Oh, Afra," Damia cried for the agony the simple thought cost him, "You aren't burned out. You won't be numb. I won't let you be. Together we can be just as powerful as ever."

Afra leaned forward, his face close to hers, his yellow eyes blazing.

"Together, Damia?" he asked in a low intense voice as he searched her face.

Her fingers plucking shyly and nervously at his blanket, Damia could not look away from an Afra who had altered disturbingly. Damia tried to comprehend the startling change. Unable to resort to a mental touch, she saw Afra for the first time with only physical sight. And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine.

How could she have blundered around so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman's most important function in life begins with physical domination?

"Damia—speechless?" Afra teased her, his voice tender.

She nodded violently as she felt his warm fingers ?7 closing around her nervous hand. Immediately she experienced a profoundly sensual empathy.

"Why did you wait so long, knowing that I needed you?" The words burst from her.

With a low triumphant laugh, Afra pulled her into his arms, cradling her body against his and settling her head in the crook of his arm.

"Familiarity breeds contempt?" he asked, mocking her gently with her own words.

"And how could you... a T3... manage to mask..." she went on, growing indignant.

"Familiarity also bred certain skills."

"But you were always so aloof and reserved. And Mother..."

"Your mother was no more for me than Sodan was for you," Afra interrupted her, his eyes stern as she stared up at him, shaken by his harsh voice.

His expression altered again, his arms tightened convulsively as he bent his head and kissed her with an urgent, lusty eagerness.

"Sodan may have loved you, in his fashion, Damia," Afra's voice said in her ear, "but mine will be far more satisfying for you."

Trembling and ready, Damia opened her mind to Afra without a single reservation. Their lips met again as Afra held her tightly in what would shortly be far more than a mere meeting of minds.

"Daughter" and "Dull Drums" were specifically slanted for the young adult market, but the original yam concerning Nora Fenn and the futuristic university system is far, far out.

I had submitted a story called "A Pocket to Mend" at the Pennsylvania Milford SF Writers' Conference, chaired by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. It was savaged by the assembled writers as sentimental, impossible, and stupid! And after I had the opportunity to try to explain my intentions, I was told that I had done all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. They suggested I go home and really think the basic idea through. From the original premise I retained the term "Wendy," meaning a girl with tolerance and understanding (in my story, training), who acts as housemother to and bears the children of men with homosexual proclivities.

I had enough homosexual male friends—even before the Gay Liberation developed—who were bitter that they could not adopt children because of their sexual preferences. I have never felt capable of writing a fulllength novel about this situation as it should be written. So only these three stories exist, and they involve a futuristic society in which all citizens may have a "legal" child.

"Changeling" has never before been published. This story deals with one aspect of the "Wendy" theme. I wrote it originally in response to Harlan Ellison's request for a story for his Dangerous Visions anthology. Frankly, I think this one has a far more dangerous vision than "The Bones Do Lie," the story Harlan finally accepted.

Daughter

THE MOMENT HER FATHER BEGAN TO YELL AT her twin brother Nick, Nora Fenn edged toward the door of the Complex office. George Fenn's anger always seemed to expand in direct proportion to the number of witnesses. She knew it humiliated Nick to be harangued in front of anyone, and this time there was absolutely nothing she could say in Nick's defense. Why hadn't he waited till she got back from school and could help him program the Planter?

"Fifty acres clearly marked corn," and Father viciously stabbed a thick forefinger at the comer of the room dominated by the scale model of the farm. He'd spent hours last winter rearranging the movable field units. In fact, Nora thought he displayed a lot more concern for the proper allocation of crops than he did for his two children. He certainly didn't berate the corn when the ears weren't plump or turned to ergot.

"And you," roared Father, suddenly clamping his hands tightly to his sides, as if he were afraid of the damage they'd do if he didn't, "you plant turnips. What kind of programmer are you, Nicholas? A simple chore even your sister could do!"

Nora flinched at that. If Father ever found out that it was she, not Nick, who did the most complex programming... She eased past the county maps, careful not to rustle the thin sheets of plastic overlay that Father had marked with crop, irrigation, and fertilizing patterns. The office was not small. One wall, of course, was the computer console and storage banks, then the window that looked out onto the big yard of 60 the Complex, the threefootsquare relief model of the Fenn Farmlands on its stand. But two angry Fenns would diminish a Bargaining Hall.

Nora was struck by a resemblance between father and son, which she'd not really appreciated before. Not only were both men holding their arms stiffly against their sides, but their jaws were set at the same obstinate angle and each held one shoulder slightly higher than the other.

"I'm going to see that socalled Guidance Counselor of yours tomorrow and find out what kind of abortive computer courses you've been given. I thought I'd made it plain what electives you were to take."

"I get the course I'm able to absorb..."

Oh, please. Nick, breathed Nora, don't argue with him. The Educational Advancements will be posted in a day, two at the most, and then there's nothing he can do to alter the decision.

"Fenns are landsmen," Father shouted. "Born to the land, bred by the land!"

The dictum reverberated through the room, and Nora used the noise to mask the slipping sound of the office door. She was out in the narrow passageway before Father realized that he'd lost part of his audience. She half ran to the outer door, the spongyfiber flooring masking the sounds of her booted feet. When she was safely outside the rambling trilevel habitation, she breathed with relief. She'd better finish her own afterschool chores. Now that Father'd got started on Nick, he'd be finding fault elsewhere. Since there weren't any apprentice landsmen on the Fenn Farm Complex right now, "elsewhere" could only be Nora. Mother never came in for Father's criticism, because everything she did in her quiet unspectacular way was perfectly done. Nora sighed. It wasn't fair to be so good at everything. When her children complained Mary Fenn would laugh and remark that practice made perfect. But Mother always had some bit of praise, or a hug or a kiss to hearten you when she knew you'd tried. Father... if Father would only say something encouraging to Nick...

Nora stayed to the left of the low, rambling, living quarters, out of the view afforded by the office window. She glanced across the huge plasticobbled yard which she had just finished hosing down. Yes, she had washed down the bay doors of the enormous bam that housed the Complex's Seeder, Plowboy, and Harvester. And done a thorough job of cleaning the tracks on which the heavy equipment was shunted out of the yard and onto the various rails leading to the arable tracts.

Turnips! If only Nick had blown the job with a highpriority vegetable, like carrots or beets. But turnips? They were nothing but subsistencelevel food. Father cannily complied with Farm Directives and still managed to plant most of the Fenn lands to creditable crops like corn and beets. Fifty more acres of turnips this year might mean Nick would have that much less free credit at the university.

Nora sighed. When Educational Advancements were posted, the suspense would be over, the pressure off the graduating students. Who'd go on to Applied or Academic in her class, she wondered? But there was no way of finding out short of stealing Counselor Fremmeng's wrist recorder. You only got pass/fail decisions in elementary grades. An arbitrary percentile evaluation defeated the purpose of modem educational methods. Achievement must be measured by individual endeavor, not mean averages or sliding curves. Young citizens were taught to know that knowledge was required of contributing citizens. Computerassisted drill constantly checked on comprehension of concept and use of basic skills. Educational Advancement, either Applied or Academic, depended as much on demonstrated diligence as inherent ability. Consequently, the slow student had every bit as much chance, and just as much right to education as the quick learner.

Well, Nora told herself briskly, it doesn't contribute anything to society to stand here daydreaming. You'll know in a day or two. In the meantime...

Nora went through the grape arbor toward the skimmer shed, near, the far left compound wall. She had just turned in to the building when she felt the reverberation of rapid thudding through the linked plasticobbles. Then Nick came pounding around the side of the building.

"Nora, lend me your skimmer?" he begged, unracking it as he spoke. "Mine's still drying out from Saturday's irrigating."

"But, Nick... Father..."

Nick's face darkened the way Father's did when he met resistance.

"Don't give me any static. Nor. I gotta change state..."

"Oh, Nick, why didn't you wait until I could've checked you out?"

Nick set his jaw, his eyes blinking rapidly.

"You had to see Fremmeng, remember? And when I got home, the orders were waiting and I couldn't. I'm due over at Felicity's now." Nick turned up the pressure gauge, filling the tanks of the skimmer. "Orders. Orders. That's all I ever get from him. That and 'Fenns are crop farmers,'" Nick snorted. "He thinks he can program kids like a computer. Well, I'm not a crop farmer. It switches me off. Off!"

"Nick, please. Keep unity. Once you get to the university, you choose the courses you want. He can't go against Educational Advancement. And if he tries, you can always claim sanctuary against parental coercion. There isn't anyone in the Sector who wouldn't support your claim..."

Nick was staring at her incredulously, but suddenly the anger drained out of his face and was replaced by an exaggerated expression of tolerant forbearance.

"Claim sanctuary? I haven't lost all sense of unity, Nora," he told her sternly. "Hey, what did Fremmeng want you for?"

"Me? Oh, he had the absolutely more irrelevant questions! About how you and I get along, my opinions on family harmony and social contributions, and pairing off."

Nick regarded her with an intent, impersonal stare. "He did, huh? Look, Nor," and her brother's mood changed state completely, "I need to see Felicity. I gotta blow out of here!"

Nora grabbed his arm as he inflated the skimmer.

"Nick, what did you say to Father?"

Nick gave her a sour look now. "I told him he'd better hold off making so many big plans for me to be the Fenn Complex's Master Ruralist, until he sees the Educational Advancements."

"Nick, if you don't get Advancement, Father will just...just..."

"Abort and sulk!" Nick finished for her. "No, I'll get Advancement, all right. On my terms! There's not a blasted thing wrong with Applied. It's Father who tried programming the university for me. But I've had different plans." Nick's look turned as hard as Father's could when he'd lost crops.

"What do you mean. Nick? What have you been doing?" Nora was suddenly scared. What had Father driven Nick to do?

"Nora, sweetie. Old Bates at the Everett Complex is about due for retirement. Felicity Everett and I want to pair off as soon as the E.A.'s have been posted. And it's just possible that Landsman Everett would opt for me as assistant." Nick's expression altered again, this time to enthusiasm, and Nora felt relief at the change.

"Oh, he would. Nick. You know what he said about your term paper on ovine gene manipulation." Then Nora caught the significance of his plan.

"Yes, indeedy, sister mine. Nick can cut a program on his own, without your help or Father's."

She was so astonished at the calculation in his smile that he was able to loosen her fingers from the handlebars. He was off on the skimmer at a high blow before she could stop him.

"Nick..."

"Give my love to our foulfeathered friends!" he called over his shoulder cheerfully, and launched the skimmer straight across the meadows toward the Everetts' Herd Complex.

Resolutely, Nora made for the distant poultry house on foot. Father proclaimed that chickens and turkeys were a woman's business. She hated tending them and usually swapped the chore with Nick. Nick found poultry a trifle more engrossing than the tedious crop programming.

Why couldn't Nick focus a little more attention on what he was doing instead of expending all his energies thwarting Father? Irritably, she scuffed at a vagrant pebble in the track that led straight from the lowrambling Farm Complex, set in the fold of the soft hills, toward the Poultry house. She could see the glitter of the round roof as she topped the next rise.

Educational Advancement! She so hoped that she'd qualify... at least for Applied Advancement. That would prove to Father she wasn't all that stupid, even if she was a girl. Maybe, if she could make Journeyman Class Computer... she really felt that she understood mathematics and symbolic logic. If she got Journeyman, Father mightn't be so disappointed when he finally realized that Nick was absolutely set against crop farming. While Father might feel that women were being educated far beyond society's profit, no contributing citizen could argue with the Advancement Board's decision. For the board was impartial, having the best interests of society and the individual at heart. Father might scoff at the premise that everyone had the constitutional right to shelter, food, clothing, and education as long as he maintained a class average. But then, Father disparaged a system that rewarded the diligent student with credit bonuses for something as intangible as academic excellence.

"That doesn't feed anyone, make anything, buy or sell anything," he'd say when he'd started on that tangent. There was no use explaining to such a pragmatist.

If Nora could get certified in computer logistics and was able to handle the Complex's Master Ruralist, then surely he'd be proud of her. He wouldn't mind that one of his children was a girl, not the second boy he'd printed into the Propagation Registration.

Father never let Nora, or her mother, forget that he had not computed twins, nor mixed sexes. He'd opted for both legal progeny to be male. Since early sex education in school, Nora had wondered how her mother had managed not only a multiple birth but a split in sexes without Father's knowledge. For one thing, multiple births had been uncommon for the last hundred years, since Population Control had been initiated. Most duly registered couples opted for one of each sex, well spaced. Of course, George Fenn would complain about PC, too. Or rather, the provision which permitted only exceptional couples to have one or two more children above the legal number—in return for extraordinary contributions to society.

"They put the emphasis on the wrong genetic factors," Father would argue bitterly whenever the subject came up. "If you breed for brain, the species weakens physically, flaws develop." He'd always flex his huge biceps then, show off his twometertall, onehundredkilo frame in support of his argument. He'd been disappointed, too, when Nick, scarcely an undersized man, stopped slightly short of two meters in height. Father'd glower at Nora, as if her slender body had robbed her twin of extra centimeters.

How had Mary Fenn, a woman of muted qualities, coped so long and amiably with her husband? Her quiet, uncritical voice was seldom raised. She knew when you were upset, though, or sick, and her capable hands were sure and soft. If anyone deserved Maternity Surplus, it was Mother. She was so good! And she'd managed to remain completely in control of herself, a presence unperturbed by her husband's tirades and intemperate attitudes, efficiently dealing with each season and its exigencies.

Of course, it was no wonder that Mother was quiet. Father was such a dominating person. He could shout down an entire Rural Sector Meeting.

"A fine landsman," Nora heard her father called. "But don't cross him," she'd heard whispered. "He'll try to program things his way, come hell or high water. He knows the land, though," was the grudging summation.

"Knows the land, but not humans," Nora muttered under her breath. "Not his children. Certainly he doesn't know what his son really wants."

Maybe once Nick gets away to university, harmony will be restored between father and son. Nick ought to have a stronger desire to maintain family unity...

Crop farming wasn't all that bad, Nora thought. By punching the right buttons, you could now mow a thousandacre field, as Nora had done as a preteen, when the apprentices let her. You could winnow and cull with a vacuum attachment; grade, bag, clean your field far more efficiently than the most careful ancient gleaners. You could program your Plowboy to fertilize at five levels as the seed was planted. One Complex with two families or a couple of responsible apprentices could efficiently farm an oldtime countysized spread and still turn a luxury credit. Not to mention having fresh and ready supplies of any edible and some of those luxuries above the subsistence level that the City Complexes craved.

Now Nora could hear the pitiful muted honking of the geese in the Poultry House. She winced. There were certain aspects of farming that could not be completely automated. You can't tape a broody hen, and you can't computerize the services of a rooster. Cocks' crows still heralded sunrise over the fields, whether the clarion summons issued from a wooden slated crate or the sleek multipentangle that housed the poultry raised by the Fenn Complex. Eggs laid by hens in Nora's charge would be powdered and eventually whipped to edibility on the Jupiter station, or be flashfrozen to provide sustenance when the first colony ship set forth as it was rumored to do in the next decade. Turkeys from this Complex regularly made the oneway trip to the Moon bases for Winter Solstice celebrations, call them Saturnalias or Santa Claus if you would.

She entered the poultry pentangle through the access tunnel which led straight to the computer core that handled all watering, feeding, cleaning, egg collection, and slaughter operations. The Fenn Complex did not sell to dietary groups, so the market preparations were the standard ones.

She checked the tapes on the Leghorn fifth, replenished the grit supply, and tapped out a reorder sequence. She flushed out all the pen floors and refreshed the water. Then she checked the mean weight of the torn turkeys, growing from scrawny, longlegged adolescence to plumpbreasted maturity. A trifle more sand for digestion, a richer mash for firmer meats, and a little less of the growth hormones. Concentrated goodness, not size for size's sake anymore.

The geese were fattening, too, on their fixed perches. Goose livers on the rod. Nora hated the calculated cruelty that brought in credit margin for the Fenn Complex. Stuff the poor helpless fowl, engorge their livers for the delectation of the gourmet. The geese lived sheltered, circumscribed lives, which was not living at all, for they couldn't see out of thenown quarters. Nothing distracted them from their purpose in life—death from enlarged livers. Nora was distracted from her chores by their shrill honking. She forced herself to read the gauges. Yes, the upper group were ready for market. Even their plaint registered the truth of their selfdestruction. They'd been bred for one purpose. It was their time to fulfill it. She coldly dialed for a quotation on the price of geese and goose liver at the Central Farm Exchange. The European price printed out at a respectable high. She routed the information to the Farm's main console. It might Just sweeten Father's cantankerous mood to realize a quick credit from the sale.

Nora took a detour on the way back, across the onehundredacre field. The willows her greatgrandfather had planted the day the Farm Reforms were passed were tipped with raw yellow. Spring was an Earthmoment away. Soon the golden limbs would sprout their green filaments, to drape and float them on the irrigation ditch that watered their thirsty feet. Would her greatgrandchildren admire the willows in their turn? The whimsy irritated her.

She walked faster, away from what the willows stood for. She didn't really have to be back at the Complex until mealtime, an hour or so away. Father always programmed too much time for her to tend the poultry house, which was an unflattering assessment of her ability but usually gave her more time for something she'd.wanted to do that Father might not consider contributory. If only once he'd look at her as if she weren't something printed out by mistake. How in the name of little printed circuits had Mother dared to have twins?

Nora used her spare time to pick cress at the sluice gate beds. It was a soothing occupation and contributed to dinner's salad. When she finally got back to the house, she glanced into the office. The printout slot was clear, so Father had seen her report. She'd simply have to wait to find out if he'd acted on the data. The main console was keyed to his code only.

She heard the meal chime from the kitchen area and quickly brought the cress to her mother, who was taking roast lamb out of the oven. Did Mother know about Nick's quarrel? Lamb was her father's favorite protein.

"Oh, cress! That was a considerate thought, Nora. We'll put a few sprigs on the lamb platter for looks. There'll only be three of us for dinner, you know."

Nora didn't know, for surely Nick would be back from the Everett Complex; but just then Father came in, grimfaced, and sat down. Again Nora wondered just how far he had goaded Nick this afternoon. Why had she played the coward and left?

The tender lamb stuck in her throat like so much dry feed. Her stomach seemed to close up as if eating had been programmed out, but she forced herself to clear her plate. No one, in this day and age and especially at George Fenn's table, wasted real food. Once—and only once—as a child she had left real food on her plate. She'd spent the next two weeks trying to swallow common subsistencelevel rations.

Conversation was never encouraged at Fenn meals, so the awkward meal dragged on. When Nora could finally excuse herself and make for the sanctuary of her room, her father stopped her.

"So, Nora, you've been doing Nicholas's programming for him, eh?" Father's voice was icy with disapproval; his eyes were specks of gray.

Nora stared back, speechless. Oh, Nick couldn't have!

"Don't gawk at me, girl. Answer!" Father's big fist banged the table and a startled "Yes, Father," came from her.

"And how long has this... this deception gone on?"

Nora didn't dare look at him.

"How long?" Father repeated, his voice rising in volume and getting sharper.

"Since—since spring," she answered.

"Which spring?" was the acid query.

Nora swallowed hard against the sudden nauseating taste of lamb in her mouth.

"The first year of programming."

"You dared take over a task assigned your brother —by me? Designed to acquaint him with the problems he'll face as a landsman?"

Instinctively Nora leaned as far back in her chair, away from her father's looming body, as she could. Not even George Fenn would disrupt family harmony by striking a child, but he was so angry that it seemed to Nora he had become a terrible stranger, capable even of causing her physical harm.

"Nick couldn't seem to get the trick of it," she managed to say in her own defense. "I only helped a little. When he got jammed."

"He's a Penn. He's got farming in his blood. Five generations of farming. You've robbed him of his heritage, of his proper contribu—"

"Oh, no, Father. Nick's always contributed. He'd do the poultry..." and her sentence broke off as she saw the bloated, red face of her father.

"You dared... dared exchange assignments?"

"You miss the point entirely, George," Mother interceded in her placid way. "The tasks were completed, were well done, so I cannot see why it is so wrong for Nick to have done which, and Nora what. They're both Fenns, after all. That's the core of the matter."

"Have you changed state, woman?" Father wanted to know, but astonishment had aborted his anger. "Nicholas is my son! Nora's only a girl."

"Really, George. Don't quibble. You know, I've been thinking of enlarging my contribution to society now that the children are about to advance. I'd really like to go back to the Agriculture Institute and up date my credentials. Sometimes," Mother went on in the conversational way in which she was apt to deliver startling conclusions, "I think the children have studied a whole new language when I hear them discussing computer logic. Remember when I used to take an apprentice's place, George? Of course, it would be much more interesting for me if you'd diversify the Complex. I can't have any more children, of course, but if we bred lambs or calves, I'd've young things to tend again. Society does say it'll satisfy every individual's needs." She gave her husband an appealing smile. "Do try to compute that in your fall program, George. I'd appreciate it."

Looking at Mother as if she'd taken leave of her senses. Father rose and pushed back his chair. He mumbled something about checking urgent data, but stumbled out of the dining area, past the office, and out of the house.

"Mother, I'd no idea..."

The rest of Nora's words died in her throat because her mother's eyes were brimming with mischief and she looked about to laugh.

"I oughtn't to do that to George when he's had a big dinner. But there're more ways to kill a cat than choking him with butter—as my grandmother used to say. Although that's a shocking way to use butter —not to mention a good cat—but Grandmother was full of such dairyoriented expressions. Hmmm. Now dairy farming might not be such a bad compromise, considering the printout quotes on milk and cheese this spring." Then she closed her lips firmly as if her own loquacity startled her as much as it did Nora. The laughter died in her eyes. "Nora?"

"Yes, Mother?"

"In this society, a person is legally permitted to develop at his own pace and follow his own aptitudes. Not even a stubborn atavist like your father has the right to inhibit another's contribution. Of course, the responsible citizen tries to maintain harmonious relations with his family unit up to that point of interference.

"You realized, I'm certain, that even if Nick has no love of crop farming, he is basically attuned to rural life. I've been so grateful to you, dear, for... soothing matters between your father and brother." The words came out haltingly and though Mother didn't look directly at her, Nora could appreciate her difficulty. Mother had scrupulously avoided taking sides in the constant altercations between Nick and Father. She had somehow always maintained family unity. Her unexpected frankness was essentially a betrayal of that careful neutrality. "I had hoped that Nick might be a more biddable boy, able to go along with his father's ambitions. They may be oldfashioned—"

"Mother, you know Father is positively medieval at times." Nora regretted her flippancy when she saw the plea for understanding in her mother's eyes. "Well, he is, but that's his bit. And he does make a distinguished contribution as a landsman."

"Yes, Nora. Few men these days have your father's real love of the earth. It isn't every landsman," Mother added, her voice proud, "who runs a Complex as big as ours and makes a creditable balance."

"If only Father didn't try..."

But Mother was looking off into the middle distance, her face so troubled, her eyes so dark with worry, that Nora wanted to cry out that she really did understand. Hadn't she proved that with all she'd done to keep unity?

"You're a kind, thoughtful, considerate child, Nora," Mother said finally, smiling with unexpected tenderness. "You undoubtedly rate very high on interpersonal relationships."

"You must, too," Nora protested, glancing toward the office.

Mother gave a rueful little laugh. "I do, or I shouldn't have got on so well with your father all these years. But, right now, we both have to work together to maintain family harmony."

"You haven't had a deficiency notice on me, have you?"

"Good lands, no, child," and Mother was clearly startled at the notion. "But Nick had an interview with Counselor Fremmeng and he's reasonably certain, from the way the Counselor talked, that he is 72 going to disappoint your father. You know that George has been positive Nick would receive Academic Advancement. And frankly, Nora, Nick not only doesn't want it, he's sure he won't get it."

"Yes, he mentioned something like that to me this afternoon after Father reamed him," Nora said sadly. "But what could Father possibly do in the face of E.A. postings except admit that he couldn't compute Nick into his own program?"

Mother gave Nora one of her long, disconcertingly candid stares.

"It's not a question, Nora, of what your Father would or would not do. It's a question of how we maintain family unity, and your father's dignity and standing in the Sector. With a little tactful and affectionate... handling, he can think it was all his own notion in the first place."

Nora stared at her mother with dawning respect and admiration.

"That's why you offered to update your credentials?"

Mother grinned. "Just thought I'd plant the notion.

It is spring, you know."

"Mother, why on earth did you marry Father?" Nora asked in a rush. She might never get another chance to find out.

An unexpectedly tender expression on her mother's face made her appear younger, prettier.

"Land's sake, because he was the kind of man I wanted to marry," Mary Fenn said with a proud lift of her chin. "A man to do for, and George takes a lot of doing, you know. Keeps me on my toes. He has such tremendous vitality. I like that. He knows and loves and understands the land, and I wanted that, too. I knew that was good for me, to be close to the land, and I wanted to raise my children close to natural things. Sometimes I think there's too much dependence on technology. I'm a throwback, too, Nora, just as much as your father is with his antiquated notions of a son following in his father's footsteps on land that's been in the same family for generations." Mother looked down at her squarepalmed strongfingered hands as if they represented her inner self.

"I like to feel warm earth, to get dirty. I want to do with my hands, not just let them idly punch a button or two. I like growing things, young things. If I could've defied the Population Control laws, too, I'd've had a whole passel of brats to raise. As it was..." and her lips formed a glowing smile of love and compassion that could encompass a whole county.

"As it was," Nora said with a giggle, "you had twins in spite of Father."

"Yes," Mary Fenn chuckled, her eyes lit up with laughter, "I had twins. A boy for your father," and her face was both dutiful and mischievous, "and a girl for me."

"Well, Nick's not the son Father wanted. Mother—" and suddenly the answer was the most important thing in Nora's life. "—Mother, am I the daughter you wanted?"

The laughter died abruptly and Mother placed her square hands on either side of Nora's face.