"Ships of the two most recent classes would require no shell penetration. They were already fitted with supplemental leads, placed in the cerebral areas required by this connection, in case future modifications might be needed."

"That would leave Amon out," Helva said.

"He's out anyhow," Niall affirmed. "He never heard of Shakespeare and his brawn couldn't act his way out of a saloon brawl."

"The brawn has to act, too? Well, that obviously lets me out as I have no brawn at the moment, do I?"

"God spare me your tongue when you're really mad. Actually Chadress Turo has been called back on active duty ..."

"Another temporary? No, absolutely not."

"For this assignment, some ships would change brawns in a flash. Blast it all, Helva," Parollan shouted, "don't be such an ass. Listen to me. You've never before been stubborn for the wrong reasons."

Helva digested that unpalatable charge in silence.

"I'll listen."

*That's more like my Helva,"

"I'm not your Helva."

"You sound like Ansra Colmer."

Helva sputtered indignantly.

"You do, throwing your weight around ..." Niall insisted.

"She hasn't been trying to scratch Solar Prane from the mission, has she? Because if she has ..."

"She's got very influential backing," Niall said, but something in his attitude, a certain tenseness, a sly gleam in his eye, warned Helva.

She chuckled softly, watching the effect on him. He reacted.

"I thought so," she laughed aloud. "Her backing won't mean anything if the probability curve still favors Prane. And nothing's occurred to change that, has it?"

"Trust actors to blab all over the place," Niall growled, his features screwed up into a sour expression. "You must have stayed up all night listening to their nightmares."

"I told you there had been some real interesting lifelike dramatic interludes. Let me know if she leans too hard on Prane."

Niall's head shot up, his face cleared of disappointment.

"Look, Helva, can't you see how valuable you'd be? You're on to Ansra. Do you realize she's gone from ship to ship, sounding out brains and brawn? That she's recommending the properly sympathetic partnership to Chief Railly which will aid and abet the success of the mission?"

"Wouldn't put it past her. If I were you, I'd get Davo Fillanaser to cite the jeopardy clause on her. She means to upstage Romeo."

"I know it!" Niall exploded from the couch, pacing the cabin. "And you know it. But she does have pull and the probability profile still favors her as Juliet. We can't shake it. We need you!"

Pointedly, Helva said nothing.

"Prane asked if you were available."

"Is this an official notice of mission, supervisor?"

"It carries a triple bonus, Helva." He was not capitulating.

"I wouldn't care if it carried a free maintenance ticket for my operable lifetime, Parollan. I know my rights. Is this an official notice of mission?"

"You stubborn, fardling jackass of a titanium-coated virgin!" shouted Parollan. He turned on his heel and pounded out of the cabin, slapped up the lock release and jammed down the lift control, descending without another look in her direction.

Helva glared at him, infuriated to the core by his compound insults, arrogant manners, twisted arguments, veiled blackmail and outright bribery. How he had ever got to be a supervisor she didn't know, but she had her rights and one of them was to choose her directing personnel and ...

Someone was requesting permission to board.

"If you've come to apologize, Niall Parollan ..."

"Apologize? Are we late or something? They just now gave us the A-O," a baritone voice shouted into her audios.

She paused long enough to distinguish half a dozen chattering voices.

"Who wants to board?" she demanded.

"She sounds mad about something," came a hoarse whisper.

"We're from brawn barracks and we'd very much like to ... to ..."

"Court her, that's the term, brasshead," prompted the hoarse whisperer.

"Permission granted," Helva said, trying not to sound as sour as she unaccountably felt.

Seven persons, five men and two women, crowded onto the lift, arguing and hollering about bruised feet and ribs all the way up. Helva could feel the strain on the lift mechanism, then bodies exploded into the lock as if in free-fall, all scrambling, to be the first to salute her. Helva stared down at the handsome, grinning faces; strong, tall people all eager to please her, to court her, to be her brawn.

Others arrived as the news circulated that the XH-834 was being courted. In fact, Helva sent the lift back down as soon as the newest arrival stepped into the lock. So it wasn't surprising that Kurla Ster could step into the lock without advance notice.

"Hey, don't gawk, girl. Come on in and take your chances with the rest of us," someone encouraged her.

"She's not competition, brawns," Helva sang out. "Let her through to the pilot's cabin."

Kurla raised one hand as if to protest, her face reflecting confusion and embarrassment. Before she could verbalize, she was pushed through the crowd and into the cabin.

"Nothing's happened to the Solar, Kurla?" Helva asked, the moment the door shut on the noise.

Relief washed away the uncertainty as Kurla cried, "You do care about him."

"I respect Solar Prane as an artist and as a human being," Helva replied, choosing her words carefully, wondering if Parollan were behind this visit.

"Then why did you refuse the assignment when he specifically asked for you?" There was a shrill note to the girl's voice, although she was trying hard to speak evenly.

"I have not refused the assignment."

Kurla's lips tightened angrily. "Then Ansra Colmer has been able to keep your name off."

"I don't know anything about that, Kurla. I have been approached ... unofficially ... and I was very flattered that Solar Prane asked for me. But I have also made it plain ... unofficially ... that I do not want another assignment with a temporary brawn."

"I don't understand. I thought it was interference from Colmer. That you didn't realize he wanted you. Don't you realize there's not another ship that even knows who Shakespeare was, much less quotes him on cue? And he thought you might even like to play the Nurse. He was honestly impressed with your reading on the way here. Why, you're so perfect, it's like an answer to an impossibility. And he's got to have the very best there is. It's got to be perfect ... she fought to control her voice, "It's just got to be perfect."

"Because it's the end for him?"

Kurla seemed to crumple in on herself and sagged against the bulkhead, unbidden tears in her eyes.

"God spare me a woman's tears," Helva said, angry and annoyed. "So it's his swan song and you've decided that I'm the ship to sing it?"

"Please ... if you've a gram of humanity in you ... " Kurla covered her tactless mouth with both hands, her eyes wide.

"Actually, about 22 kilos of me is very human, Kurla ..."

"Oh, Helva, I'm so sorry," she stammered. "I'm so sorry. I had no right to come here. I'm sorry. I thought if I could just explain ..."

Awkwardly she got to her feet, her muscles straining.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd forget I came here," Kurla went on in a very stiff, formal voice, fumbling for the door release. "It is always a mistake to act on impulse."

"Is it true that not one of the others knows Shakespeare?"

"I wouldn't demean myself with lies."

"So Ansra is making it very difficult."

The pride seemed to drain out of Kurla and she leaned her head wearily against the door for a moment, defeat showing in every curve of her slender body.

"She implies the most despicable things about him. She's said ... never mind. But she is undermining him with the rest of the cast. And ... and Helva, I don't trust her."

"Then have her replaced, you little idiot."

"Me? What could I do? I'm a medical attendant."

"Kurla, the man's dying. You can't be deluding yourself about that ..."

"No. That's the one delusion I don't have." Something seemed to pull the girl erect then. "I just don't want him cheated out of this last perfect performance. His acting is all he has left and he's so good at it."

"You've influence with him, though. Get him to replace Ansra."

Kurla shook her head sadly. "He won't because he believes that she's the best Juliet available so he'll put up with her ... temperament. And ..." Kurla hesitated, the struggle with honesty apparent in her expressive face, "she was, when they rehearsed back at Duhr. Then ... she changed. Overnight. Prane won't do anything. And she'll destroy him, Helva. I know it. Somehow she'll destroy him."

"Not while I've got my eye on her, she won't," Helva replied firmly.

The speed with which Chadress Turo arrived afterward struck Helva as suspicious, but she knew Kurla's visit had not been planned by Parollan. And she liked Chadress. He could not have been retired very long, for his step was springy and an old, unaltered shipsuit outlined a strong, muscular body. He wore a clutch of achievement stars but no honors, which meant he had plenty but was no braggart.

"Welcome board, Chadress Turo of Marak. It's nice to have a partner, however briefly."

Chadress caught the caustic undertone. "Hope I'm not the cause of your regrets?"

"No. You're the first happy face I've seen in the last two hours."

His eyes twinkled. "You've been put into Coventry by the brains and I had to be smuggled aboard to avoid outraged brawns. Oh, they'll all forget their pique. They always do. However, officially, you're in very good odor. Supervisor Parollan is taking personal credit for convincing you to accept ..."

"The nerve of that pipsqueak ..."

"I thought so," laughed Chadress. "Well, no matter. I'm not the only one who thought you'd be the only ship to do the job right and I've only rumors ... and legends ... to go by. But it's going to be a tricky mission with so much at stake, and so many explosive ..."

"Personalities?"

Chadress laughed. "I've met many actors, I'm a classic buff myself, that's why I was called back ..." he paused, his eyes seeing a middle distance, a slight frown on his face. "In fact, I leaped at the opportunity. Some of us should be allowed to die in harness. No matter. Here's the mission tape," and he dropped it in the slot. Before he touched the playback switch, he closed the lock and turned off all but the console audio. Then he eased into the pilot's chair and settled himself to listen.

Helva was amazed at how much of the tape's information she knew. The Nekkarese com man had had most of it correct.

A survey ship on a routine mission had intercepted pulsed energy emissions of tremendous power near Beta Corvi. They tracked the emissions to the sixth planet, a methane-ammonia giant, and assumed an orbit. Before they could prepare probes for exploration in such a corrosive atmosphere, they were contacted by the Corviki.

"It felt like pressure, as if a giant hand were covering my head and pressing knowledge into my brain," was the taped comment of the survey ship captain.

The unusual form of communication was nevertheless precise enough for the Corviki to grasp the nature of their unexpected visitors and to discover a commodity which they, unimaginably sophisticated scientifically, wanted.

"I guess the best analogy," the captain of the ship went on, "is that of the pure researcher who has devoted half a century to an intensive study of some esoteric subject. He masters it and finally has time to look around him and discovers that other things exist ... like girls," the captain snickered, "and sex. He understands the theory but not the application, and he sure wants to learn."

Romeo and Juliet was a sample of the merchandise that had aroused the Corviki curiosity. If acceptable, the human company would teach understudies the full play, with movement adapted for the free-fall condition of Beta Corvi. Payment would be the Corviki process of stabilizing certain isotopes in the transuranian group whose power potential was unrealizable due to an exceedingly short half-life. Central Worlds badly needed such a process and the XH-834 was to ensure the success of this dramatic mission.

"Well, we'll give it the old home-world try," Helva said.

"You don't sound so sure."

"It sounds all too simple. For instance, this psyche transfer. How do we know it won't develop some unexpected snag and leave our people trapped down there in Corviki envelopes?"

"That's one reason we're equipping you with an override and a time control."

"Suppose the Corviki override me because they adore Colmer's Juliet?"

Chadress grinned at the notion, but threw the schematic picture of the transceiver circuitry onto the pilot's console. "Every eeg expert in the galaxy has had a go at these. There are no extraneous circuits, nothing that is not accounted for in the schematics. Furthermore, we manufactured them, not the Corviki. Now, they do specify that 7 hours is the endurance limit for our life form."

"Ahah!"

"Cool it. The transceiver has a time control, set for the maximum of seven hours, our time, so nothing could happen."

"After the maximum period, what happens to the personality if ..."

"Don't invent problems. We've got enough. However, I did speak to the Survey Ship Captain and he was most encouraging about the transfer. In fact, he said it was perfect for a bunch of actors. You think that you want to be on the surface of the planet. And you are! No pain, no strain. Simplicity itself."

"Simplicity has a habit of expanding into catastrophe!"

Chadress called her a pessimist and went on with the briefing. She thought of half a dozen factors that could alter disastrously betwixt here and Beta Corvi, the least of which was ringing in an unknown device.

The adjustment to be attached to herself was even simpler. Even ingenious, she admitted, examining the compact device under microscopic lenses. It would link several infinitesimal strands already embedded in her cerebrum. One which extended deep in the area controlling the optic nerves, for the psyche transfer was triggered by this portion of the human brain. The other two were to link cross-over reflexes that would enable her to tune and to disconnect the psyche relay for the rest of the mobiles. All three synapse attachments were self-activitating and did not appear on the pilot's board.

The hookup had to be made with Helva under anesthesia, and she disliked that part intensely. It was unnerving for her to hear the chief of Regulus Base (no less) mouth the pitched syllables that triggered the panel that was the only access to her shell behind the titanium column. It seemed she hovered in an eternity of vulnerability before he touched the anesthesia release. She instinctively struggled against unconsciousness. Was that how poor 732 had felt? Or had her madness banished fear?

Helva's thought was no sooner formulated than she was conscious again. Startled, she gazed out into an empty cabin, irritated that Chief Railly dared leave her unprotected. Then she was aware that considerable time had elapsed since the chief had spoken, 18 hours, 20 minutes and 32 seconds, to be precise.

"Awake again, Helva?" and Chadress stepped into her lock. "I say, they certainly timed it to the exact second. I'm to ask if you've a headache?"

"Headache? How could I? I've no pain reflexes."

Then she looked around her main cabin, where transceivers had been stowed by her couches, and wall units had been added to accommodate the additional personnel. Bunks had been added to all her cabins and another table fitted into the pilot's cabin.

"I'm a ruddy troopship."

"Indeed you are," Chadress agreed, "and the troupe is assembling."

Five men ascended in the lift and were introduced by Chadress, but she found it easier to think of them as the parts they would play. The introductions were cut short by sirens and the advent of a fleet of ground vehicles.

"Ansra's made the scene," the man who played Prince Escalus announced in a dry voice.

No one seemed sorry when Chadress refused any boarders, including Chief Railly. As he took the restriction in good part, the others had to and Ansra was reduced to waving and smiling at her admirers as she was lifted smoothly lockward.

"Here I am again, Helva," she said in a bright, glad way that certainly didn't deceive Helva.

"Welcome aboard, Miss Colmer." You feed me the cue, Helva thought to herself, and I'll read the appropriate line.

Immediately Central Com, and it wasn't Niall Parollan's voice, gave her clearance for the Orbital Station. The shuttle run was fast, and in no time Helva was at the free-fall lock.

The scene was reminiscent of the Duhr landing, Davo, Solar Prane and Kurla the central figures of a smiling cluster. But here, the whole cluster entered, all of them floating with excellent control into the cabin, pushing down to the couches and securing themselves for maneuver and acceleration. There was neither wasted time nor motion.

Prane looked so gay and alert that Helva glanced at Kurla, whose attitude would transmit a truer reflection of her patient's health. The girl was radiant, her eyes as bright as Prane's, her manner proud and confident. She managed a polite nod to Ansra, who smiled fixedly at everyone.

By contrast, Davo looked tired and thoughtful. He pushed immediately toward the sleeping accommodations and meshed himself into a bunk.

Prane hovered in front of Helva. "I want to thank you, very much, for putting aside your personal preferences to undertake this venture. Chief Railly has assured me that you will have the topmost priority when you return."

Helva did not have time to analyze why his words disturbed her, for the Orbital Station transmitted good luck and clearance. Chadress did the manual piloting, that was protocol, but Helva was so used to doing things herself it was hard to watch. Not that he was inept. Damn, damn, damn, she thought, glancing around the crowded cabin, wishing half her mind were busy on something routine, how had she let herself get talked into this?

The moment Chadress announced turnover and freefall, Prane called a rehearsal. First he put the five men who had joined the ship planetside through the staging they had missed. They'd all worked in freefall and they knew their roles. All they required was time to familiarize themselves with movements and the Nurse's voice issuing from the wall. Ansra, however, chose to be difficult about that. She undulated toward the director, whether to charm him or intimidate him was a question.

"Really, Prane, I can project any emotion required of any capable actress, but to pretend an ... an abstract voice is Juliet's Nurse is the end. How can I play to a wall? And, how may I ask, can ... Helva (it seemed to be difficult for Ansra to name her) acquire any ease in free-fall, when I understand she has never made any use of a body?"

"My stage directions are perfectly clear and are printed in my circuitry. Therefore I cannot make a mistake. That is, as long as you are where Juliet is supposed to be," Helva answered.

No one actually laughed aloud at the putdown. Ansra resumed her proper position, frowning, and chewing her lip.

However, her assertion that she could project any emotion required of any capable actress seemed to fall short of the mark in scenes with proper actors. Her Juliet remained wooden and inadequate. She did not take fire from Romeo's speeches, although how she could fail was beyond Helva's comprehension. The man was inspired ... and inspiring.

Relieved now for many days of the press of gravity on his spongy bones, buoyed constantly by the success of every other aspect of this singular production, Prane exuded a vitality, an enthusiasm that was contagious. He was apparently indefatigable.

As he was setting scene iv of Act I, with himself, Mercutio, Benvolio and others doubling up as maskers and torchbearers, Mercutio finished his speech: "Come, we burn daylight, ho!"

The scene had been quick, bright exchanges, the lighthearted nonsense of friends bound for a gay evening.

Mercutio repeated his line. Hastily, Helva remembered she doubled as prompter and found the place.

"Nay, that's not so," she read out.

Silence met this attempt, so she, too, repeated the line.

"We know the line," Prane said as this additional pause lengthened conspicuously. "Who says it?"

Helva gulped. "You do."

For a moment a terrible expression haunted his eyes. Then he burst out laughing and the terror was gone. "Tis always the littlest line that escapes," and he briskly cued Mercutio.

That night, as everyone slept, Prane was restless. Shamelessly, Helva turned up the volume in the cabin he shared with five other men. He was repeating scene iv over and over. Then he lay silent. Helva thought he slept, until she saw his right hand slowly creep to his belt, carefully extract a small pill from the waistband fabric of his shipsuit. With a gesture counterfeiting a random sleepy movement, the pill reached his mouth.

The secretiveness of his action, added to the intense rehearsal of that scene, gave Helva a tragic insight to the Solar. He was an addict, in the most horrifying degree: mindtrap, listed as harmless in the galactic pharmacopoeia, had become poisonous to him, fatal to mind and body. And he knew it. Yet more devastating to Solar Prane was loss of memory and to prevent that, he courted self-destruction.

Except for Ansra, rehearsals proceeded well. How Prane kept his temper with such deliberate obstructionism, Helva did not know. Every scene the Solara played began to sag, lose fire, drop pace. But Prane did not react. And Ansra apparently gave up trying to goad him into an action no one could condone. She took to needling Kurla, a far more vulnerable personality.

Fortunately, Nia Tubb, the Lady Capulet, shared the pilot's cabin, which was the women's room. She was wise in the ways of human relations and if she said nothing to the point, she did buffer Kurla from Ansra's hostility. She also helped Kurla in her lines, kept up a lighthearted monologue when the women were alone. But even she could see Ansra's tactics increasing the pressure on the sensitive, anxious medical attendant. "Honey, you have any real trouble with Colmer, you let me help, huh?" Nia Tubb said to Kurla one morning.

"Thanks," Kurla answered with a wan smile.

"Say, just between the two of us, Prane's no addict, is he? He doesn't look like one and I've seen enough to know, but still-"

"Solar Prane developed an adverse chemical reaction to long use of mindtrap."

"I always thought mindtrap was the most harmless thing in the world. I've used it myself times without number."

"Ordinarily. But the Solar has been using it for over 70 years. A residue of the silicon content, which ought to have been flushed out of his system, has built up in his tissues. He also has a liquid retention problem and the diuretic originally prescribed combined unfavorably with the mindtrap residue, leaching potassium from his system in an unremediable process."

"What does that mean? He looks fine to me." Kurla's voice, dispassionately clinical, was more tragic than tears.

"In low-grav conditions, in free-fall particularly, there is no strain on the skeleton and he's fine. But his bones are soft, a fall, a blow, any long period of heavy physical strain and he would ... in effect ... break up. And the silicon is gradually choking his vital organs to death."

"Replace 'em!"

Kurla shook her head. Nia. patted her hand rhythmically,. Helva interrupted them with a rehearsal call. And that was the worst rehearsal yet. Ansra's attitude had insidiously unnerved the entire cast, Evervone was off. They blew their lines, forgot stage business. When Mercutio and Paris got into a fight that was not in the script, Prane called a halt.

"We've gone stale. We will take today off and tomorrow. Helva, break out the finer rations. Nia and Kurla, would you be so kind, please, to see what surprises the gallev might serve up? Helva, have you some tri-casts of interest? We need to relate to the evervdav worlds that we have forgotten, immersed as we have been in ancient England."

Ansra stalked out of the main cabin, slamming the door to the women's Quarters. Helva looked in to find her staring angrily into a mirror. It was disconcerting for Helva to watch her frustrated, brooding self-examination while Nia and Kurla chattered inconsequentialities in the galley.

Helva tried to be everywhere, keeping an ear out for any trouble ... any more trouble, that is. Davo floated purposefully toward Prane. Since Helva had been speaking onlv from the main cabin, she fostered the tendency for her passengers to forget she had ears and eyes everywhere in the ship.

"You must realize by now. Prane," Davo was saying, "that Ansra is determined to ruin this production. And she is succeeding admirably."

Prane regarded his friend for a long moment, a slow smile beginning. "You've a solution?"

"Let's put her off balance. Remember what we used to do on the long hauls on tour?"

"Reshuffle all the parts?"

"Exactly. Christ, we all know each other's lines and movements."

Prane began to grin mischievously. "And ... let Helva be Juliet?"

"No, Kurla is Juliet!" Davo returned Prane's surprised stare with a dead serious dare.

"And Romeo?"

"That part need not change," Davo said evenly, then added in a light voice, "but I shall be Friar Lawrence and marry you two."

Prane waited till everyone had eaten and was relaxed with Thracian beer. The announcement met with approval, raucous and bawdy.

"I'll be Lady Capulet," Escalus announced in a squeaky falsetto.

"And I'll be Lady Montague," said Friar Lawrence in a quavering contralto, reverting to his own normal bass to add, "Always thought she was a wino."

"I'll be Escalus," Helva volunteered in a voice so like the real actor's the man dropped his tankard.

"You could be the whole damn play all by yourself," Davo vowed, his voice far more slurred than it should be on Thracian beer. "There isn't one part you couldn't do."

"Really? In that case, I'll be the Nurse," Ansra Cornier announced. "Then Helva can see how the part should be played."

"And Kurla will be Juliet," Davo cried, his eyes on Ansra. "Set the stage, oh chorus. Places, everyone. Places."

"Two households, both alike in dignity ... " Helva began promptly in a basso, sweeping everyone into the act before they had time for second thoughts.

Davo came on as Sampson, and Chadress, normally Lord Capulet, as Gregory, hamming their lines and indulging in slapstick nonsense. Balthasar rolled on, as though drunk, slurring through the establishment of conflict between the two houses. Lines were rattled off, and actors bodily moved each other into proper stage position or deliberately upstaged the speaker.

When Escalus, Lady Capulet glided on in the company of Nurse Angelica, Ansra, with deliberate malice, dispensed with fun and played her part as she had not played Juliet. And somehow twisted her lines as Nurse to mean something entirely different. Her exit line, "Go girl, seek happy nights to happy days," was barbed enough to make Escalus falter.

But then Juliet met Romeo at the feast, and Ansra's spitefulness backfired. For Prane was a different, tenderer Romeo, his voice trembled not with fatigue but with newfound love, gentle, protective, eager. And Kurla, her eyes equally discovering her lover, was Juliet, breathless, shy, daring, and precious. She blushed shyly as she said,

"For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."

She turned her hands palms down on Romeo's, as he had so often directed Ansra only to have her mis-time the words and action as to make them meaningless.

Romeo raised Juliet's hands on his, and the ardor in his eyes, the answering joy in hers, made that little scene so tender that everyone was spellbound.

"Thus from my tips, by thine, my sin is purg'd" said Romeo in so soft a voice it seemed a faint echo, but it hung clearly until his tips met Juliet's in a kiss that was as devout an avowal as a shout.

Her role forgotten completely, Ansra flung herself forward at the two still embraced and lost to their surroundings. And the proximity alarms twanged. They had arrived at their destination.

"Now," Chadress said to the actors, all seated in the main cabin, hastily cleared of all its party debris, "the transceivers were fitted to your head sizes so they will be quite comfortable. You all heard the reports from those survey ship members who used the first device. You know the transfer process is painless and easy. You think yourself on the surface and there you are."

"How can you think yourself on a surface you've never seen?" Nia demanded, grimacing at the transceiver she was holding.

"The nearest analogue would be the underseascapes on Terra in the Carribean area, or the water world in Aldebaran. Or Vega IV. Imagine yourselves surrounded by seaweeds, all shapes and colors. Yes, the survey people repeatedly emphasized the enormous importance of color. The Corviki resemble a marine animal in the class hydrozoa, sort of a large sac-like body with a complex collection of tendrils that may be nerve endings."

"Gawd, what a costume!" Nia Tubb muttered, shuddering.

"It'll fit, I'm told." Chadress grinned at her. "Now, Helva is our fail-safe. She's equipped with an automatic return relay. We've been warned not to remain too long in the Corviki environment."

"Why?" Ansra demanded in a bored voice.

"The Corviki undoubtedly have good reason, but they did not say what. Now, Prane?"

The Solar rose, looked around at the entire cast "We all know the importance of this unlikely exchange of Shakespeare for power. The Bard has been translated into every conceivable language, alien and humanoid, and somehow the essence of his plays has been understood by the most exotic, the most barbaric, the most sophisticated. There is no reason to suppose that Will Shakespeare hasn't got something to say to the Corviki ... if we do the job wholeheartedly ... or whatever our Corviki envelopes use for that Organ.

"Ladies and gentlemen, curtain!" He sat down and donned his transceiver, settling back in the couch and relaxing completely. In a few seconds a light glowed across the rim of the transceiver.

"If that's all there is to it," Nia Tubb said, and pulled hers down on her head.

The others imitated her more or less simultaneously until only Chadress and Helva remained on board.

"Check Prane," Helva said.

"He's all right as far as I can see. I'll see you down there, Helva."

And he was gone. Helva had the uncanny notion that the new synapse leads were burning hot. But that was impossible. She willed herself to descend. On the heels of the thought that this was the first time she had been outside a shell in her life, came a terrifying surge of primitive fear and then ... Transfer!

Her first indication of the difference involved pressure ... an enveloping pressure. But the Corviki had said they would provide empty envelopes for the cast to occupy. She was enveloped and the envelope was also enveloped. She could 'feel' it all around. She undulated experimentally, hoping to rid herself of this sense of being covered. It was somehow unclean to feel all along every part of her. And yet, even as she felt loose, she was at the same time compressed. Not gravity pressure, but something in which she was and was moving. Well, movement was not a new skill for her. This was, then, just a form of motion. She wriggled again and things that were part of 'her' floated up from beneath her. She could not look at them because they floated away when she tried. Hmm. She could see every part of her ship-self from one scanner or another. How limiting mobility was. Well, she'd look around as far as she was able. And stared down, down, in an unlimited perspective until finally her sight distinguished a burbling, burping mass of ochre eruptions that she recognized as 'ground'. Above and around her fronds swayed, exhaled and inhaled in a full spectrum of colors unbelievably varied and varying. Colors which in some cases had 'sound' and 'smell' as part of their value. Only 'smell' was also a novel sensation to Helva, who had utilized gauges all her life instead of the olfactory sense.

"Adapting, Helva?" a familiar presence dominated her mind. Instinctively she turned toward the 'sound' that wasn't sound as she had previously known it, but a patterned interruption of the pressures around her.

"It's odd to feel physical sensations," she replied.

"It would be, for you."

"How do you feel, Chadress?" For the presence was indisputably her brawn.

"Velvet, soft, deep, a very pleasurable tactile sensation, I assure you. And a sense of unlimited power." Chadress was impressed. "Of being young and new again." Here the dominant quality of his thought was incredulous and self-amused. "They have evidently lent us brand-new, guaranteed-unsullied shells."

"I wonder where they get them from."

A new dominance approached them and this entity was recognized by both as being a true Corviki. The presence was very dense and Chadress and Helva both received an undeniable feeling of great age and wisdom, of a unique application of basic energy.

"I am your Manager," he introduced himself. "The others are all contained. We may proceed with this expression of energy."

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," thought Helva as they propelled themselves toward a sphere-shaped area, surrounded by unanchored lumps of a dead black substance, framed by enormous breathing fronds. And suddenly, she could recognize everyone, despite their apparently homogeneous shape, by the slight variation of color tone and pressure weight.

Prane came on as dense as Manager, Helva discovered. She began to equate density with age or wisdom. Subjectively, she wondered how she 'felt' to others. Then Prane called her as chorus to open the rehearsal.

For a frantic moment, she wondered how she could possibly project 'chorus' without the audio equipment available on the ship. She had an intense desire to retreat back to her own shell again. But Prane was Director and one obeyed Director.

"Two households, both alike in dignity," and somehow her dominance enlarged, darkened, and she was more than herself.

Then Sampson and Gregory emerged from behind fronds and their dominance was shallow, light, tenuous as if inconsequential. In a fashion the cast managed to condense or dissipate themselves through the scenes until by Act IV, the new medium and the difference or exposition no longer seemed strange.

It was almost physically painful to be wrenched by the time control back into the ship and discover that they were, sadly, only flesh and blood. No one said much. They ate a great deal quickly, and then went to bed.

Helva, unfortunately, was wide awake and, for the first time in her conscious life, envied the others for the gentle oblivion of sleep. She tried not to think of the experiential effect of mobility on her conditioning. She disciplined herself by running a full scan outside. Not because anything might have changed but just to make sure all was as before. They were in orbit, black space topside, but the amorphous boiling cloud of diffuse colors, shot with brilliant lights, loomed below. She ran a check on her systems and discovered something a little unnerving in her engine compartment.

There was something blocking her readings there, yet the systems were all green on the boards. She could not 'feel' power, although there was no evidence of its absence. It was simply unavailable to her. As she pondered the implications of this, she heard a faint susurrus. She snatched at the diversion and traced it: Prane at his litany.

"If by your art, my dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. ... "

She listened avidly until the sleepy voice trailed into silence after "As you from crimes would pardon'd be. Let your indulgence set me free."

They picked up the staging the next 'day' where they had left off. Helva had the feeling none of the Corviki had left the 'stage' or were even aware that the troupe had been away. Did they control time as well as energy? Was time, as one Alpheccan theoretician maintained, merely another emission of energy?

Her perceptions were more acute today. She had control over her envelope and the sensory data it constantly received. And while the others were beginning to act, Ansra was consciously damping down.

Manager approached Ansra, in front of all, just before time was up.

"There is no logical reason to withhold energy. Conservation is not the aim of this experiment. We are assessing the effects of this form of energy expulsion on the pressure-senses and dominance factors. You inhibit this experiment. Therefore, lose energy as the equative factors require."

"Or?"

A ripple of pressure and color answered Ansra's ultimatum.

"The envelope will be permanently emptied ..."

"I will not go back to that perverted seascape to be insulted and degraded in public," Ansra declared.

She was rather magnificent, Helva thought, even if she left her audience unmoved.

"That is sufficient, Ansra Colmer," Prane said quietly, rising from the couch, his voice glacial, his eyes stony, his attitude unbending. "You have made your personal preferences and private opinions known to each and every member of the cast. However, there is more at stake than personal differences and everyone here has been exceedingly forebearing with your whimsies and little schemes. You will go back tomorrow and you will, as you were advised by the Manager, lose energy as the equative factors require."

"Who's going to make me?" Ansra struck a pose with that challenge.

"Any one of us, honey," Nia Tubb replied, forestalling Chadress and Davo, who began to rise from their seats. "Any one of us would be glad to make you. In fact, you might find when we got through with you here that it would be a relief to get into that Corviki envelope."

"You wouldn't dare!"

Helva wondered whether Ansra, having taken a stand, was too hardheaded to retreat, or unable to believe that one of her standing could be violable. Fortunately, she was also a person who could not tolerate physical pain and a half-dozen open handed blows from Nia were an effective proof and promise.

"Oh, no you don't, honey," Nia cried, grabbing Ansra's arm as the sobbing woman headed for the cabin. "You're not moving from my side, because I don't trust you out of my sight. Now you sit down and you'll eat and you'll behave. And tomorrow you'll be the best Juliet that's ever trod air."

That scene, on top of the psychological exhaustion of rehearsing on Beta Corvi, drained everyone's reserve. Chadress and Kurla passed around liquor bulbs and a high-protein soup. As soon as they ate, people drifted off to their bunks and meshed in.

"Keep Nia and Ansra under observation, Helva, will you?" Chadress suggested.

There's something different about him, Helva realized, a new depth, oddly Corvikian.

"Do you think she will play now?" Helva heard Kurla asking Prane. The two were the last awake, and seemed unable to separate.

"Her color was that of an anger-fear composite ..." Prane stopped short, staring down at Kurla.

"You're thinking Corviki," she laughed, her eyes dancing. "It's contagious, isn't it? Like assuming the characteristics of the part you're playing? See, even a rank amateur like me picks up tricks of the trade!"

"You transfer into a very solid, warm presence on Corvi, my dear."

The laughter caught in her throat and her eyes were filled with a haunted yearning. They seemed to be a breath away from a kiss when Prane, a garbled sound issuing from his throat, whirled away down the corridor.

Ansra lost energy the next rehearsal with such good will they were able to run completely through the play. Prane was so pleased with the result he informed the Manager that they could give the first complete performance.

"My energy group is excited to experience the total pressure dominances of these envelopes," the Manager replied, emanating the lavender-purples Helva equated with pleasure in Corviki. "Your next entry here is convenient?"

Prane agreed heartily.

"If this emission is satisfactory," Chadress asked, shading his dominance with the sharply controlled waste of deference to a superior force, "will Corviki entities then undertake a transfer of our patterns so we may fulfill our contract with you?"

"Affirmative. For it is evident that there is a loss of ego-entity superior to the programmed minimum. Entropy could exceed basic energy requirements."

Helva felt she'd better analyze that statement the moment she returned to herself. It sounded ... ominous ... to Helva, but not to her imprinted self in the Corviki envelope. Such a split of personality could be dangerous indeed.

Once back on the ship, it was easier to spot those who were psychologically twisting their orientation. They tended to express themselves in Corviki terms, as Prane and Chadress had the night before. The only one who seemed impervious was Ansra, but then, Ansra was so wrapped up in her personal grievances, she had no energy ... there I go, moaned Helva ... for objective experiences.

Opening night on Beta Corviki was a white-hot, frenetic triumph as far as Corviki acceptance of this form of energy loss was concerned. Beyond the stand of fronds were masses of Corviki, pulsing, throbbing as they absorbed the cast's emission, to all appearances starved for this form of energy.

Helva could feel her Corviki envelope swell to incredible dimension as the feedback resulted in a thermal reaction, giving her an unlimited mass to energize to a high excitation level. Yet she was also aware that the Corviki audience understood the conflict of the two warring energy-groups, of the desire of the two new, but not shallow, entities to combine into a new force group, of the energy-stoking of herself as the Nurse, of the brilliant light of beta particles exchanged by the two new entities, swearing neuron coalitions and, finally, forced to expend the vital energy of their cores to bring the warring groups to the realization that coexistence was possible on their energy level.

As the Prince summed up the entropy death of the two, novas of approval exploded outside the fronded area. And Helva, gross with feedback, found herself racing to emit into the nearest drained entity some ergs of that pressure, in a self-sacrifice that was ecstatic. All around her, the atmosphere crackled, popped, boomed and thundered with the resultant explosions as immeasurable positive forces recombined and all the previously expended energy was reabsorbed.

Then, indeed, did Helva bless the surgeons. Bless and curse them for hauling her inexorably back from such glorious intercourse. She dazedly recalled her scattered wits as warning lights and signals penetrated the coruscating impressions and forced her to be aware of imminent danger.

Lax figures lay, lifeless puppets with no more sign of vitality than the slight rise and fall of chests.

Scared, Helva tripped the transceivers. Lights reluctantly faded on the transceivers and still no one stirred. It seemed an eternity to Helva before Ansra moaned.

"Ansra. Ansra," Helva called in an insistent, hard voice, hoping to penetrate the woman's trancelike state. "Ansra. Ansra."

"Wha ... what?"

"Get to the galley. Get stimulant K, in the blue i.v. spray."

It was like moving a robot. She kept droning her orders, relentlessly forcing Ansra to obey. The woman's eyes blinked, her body jerked as Helva encouraged, ordered, demanded the necessary actions. Finally she got Ansra's hands around the right i.v., and got the uncoordinated body to depress the dermospray against her arm. The stimulant took effect.

"Oh migod, oh migod," Ansra muttered hoarsely. "Oh migod."

"Ansra. Give them all injections. Move, woman, move."

The actress was still little better than an automaton, so Helva took advantage of her will-lessness to make her give Kurla and Prane the first injections. Then Chadress. It was a stunned group who returned to their former bodies.

"I don't think I can go back there," Escalus told Prane in a hoarse tremulo. He put both hands to his temples, where the transceiver had left a red band. "Never thought to see the day when I couldn't face an audience because they liked me too much. But man, that place is ... is," his eyes widened with a terror he mastered. "I almost said, pure entropy." And he laughed. "But that's what's wrong with it all."

Prane, looking as drained and haunted as the others, managed a weak smile.

"There is no question that we have been overwhelmed by an unpredicted reaction. At this moment," and he paused to emphasize the phrase, "I would find a return engagement inconceivable. No, no discussion now. We need to convert mass, in the parlance of our hosts, into much-needed energy and to conserve our emissions. But I want to say how very, very proud I am of you all."

It was as well, Helva knew, for the cast could not have accepted, in their present enervation, the devastating truth of their captivity.

The silence of the ship was unbroken, even by Prane's nightly litany. Helva, too, found herself close to the verge of unconsciousness, too fatigued to worry about the problems of the morrow.

The next day brought no visible change. Everyone was still enervated. Kurla turned professional and roused those seeking oblivion in slumber to take high protein meals and massive therapeutic i.v. sprays.

Toward the evening of that day, Helva got Chadress alone in the galley for a conference.

"We'll have to put it off as long as we can, Helva. These people are drained dry. I know," and he shook his head slowly. "How're you doing?"

Helva temporized. "I always maintained shell-people are as human as anyone mobile. I know it now. I'll find it extremely difficult to go back to Beta Corvi myself. Only I know we have no choice."

"What do you mean, Helva?" Chadress didn't have enough energy left to be more than mildly curious.

"They're wondering where we are right now. They have the understudies lined up and raring to learn."

Chadress mustered a defeated groan.

"Helva, how can we ask anyone here to undertake that?"

"As I said, Chadress, we have no choice."

"I don't follow you."

"There is a little block on any lead into my power sources. I couldn't even dodge a meteor if I had to."

Chadress dropped his head into his hands, his whole body shuddering. "Helva, I can't go back. I can't. I'd ..."

"You don't have to go back. Not right now. Lord, you don't even have the energy to put on a transceiver," she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. "It's up to me."

"What's up to you?" Prane asked, drifting into the galley.

"I'm going down to explain our absence."

"On the contrary," Prane objected, trying to straighten his shoulders but all he managed was a directionless lurch against the warming units. "I'm the director. I should explain our inability to fulfill our contract."

Chaddress groaned in distress.

"You're out on your feet, Prane. Chadress, too. I'm going. That's final. Chadress, we'll discuss this further when I get back," she ordered. "Chadress?" she prompted until he nodded acquiescence.

Pain assailed Helva's mind in a brief flicker of thought as she reentered the Corviki envelope. The myriad tactile sensations from her trailing appendages indicated the presence of several strong pressure-dominances. How was she going to explain human frailty to these masters of pure energy?

The atmosphere, however, was unusually free of energy emissions. Manager, dark and full and rich, discreetly contained his mass of pressure-dominances. The others, ranged beyond him at a courteous distance, must be the understudies, she thought. If a Corviki had compassionate levels in his consciousness, surely the Manager was activating them, for he was patient as Helva struggled to present the explanatory equation, pointing out the unresolvable fractions. He replied with a show of depletion that could only be an apology that the unprecedented feedback and the production of an unstable reaction mass had resulted in such entropy for the visitors. However, they had themselves as cause.

Nevertheless, Manager sternly informed Helva, a new condition of immense significance had developed. Every single energy group around this thermal core insisted on obtaining the formulae which could repeat those unique emissions. The benefits of such expulsion would rejuvenate static energy groups once considered lost beyond reactivation. The formulae must be passed on. No matter would be considered too precious in the exchange.

Helva, feeling she was emitting desperate energies, repeated the impossibility.

Some arrangement would have to be effected, the Manager insisted. There was one unit, he drew the equation of sound that meant Juliet, which had shown an admirable control of intrinsic energy. Let it return and deliver the formulae. Otherwise ... the Manager swayed his tentacles in an unnerving approximation of a human shrug.

For a long interval Helva lacked the moral courage to indicate her return. She tried to think how this simple mission had turned into such a catastrophe. Ruthlessly she reviewed the elements of this impasse, trying to find a solution. There had to be one.

How cosmically ironic that Ansra Colmer, so bent on ruining them, was the only personality with sufficient egocentricity to survive the experience. But would she save them all?

"I'm not out of my mind, even if you all are," was Ansra's immediate response. "Nothing ... not even if you beat me to death ... could make me go back to that ... that ... gas factory. I've done all my contract called for."

"Actually you haven't, Ansra," Davo replied wearily, "not that any of us are likely to take you to task for it at Guild. But those contracts read that, if the Corviki accept our dramatic presentation as payment for their techniques, we must instruct Corviki understudies."

"Go back? Just to teach a Corviki to play Juliet?" Ansra laughed, shrilly, semi-hysterical. She whirled oa Prane. "I told them at Regulus that you'd fail. And you have! I'm glad, glad, GLAD!"

Her hatred washed like a visible tide over sensibilities already abraded and tender. Still laughing, she careened off the walls on her way to the cabin, collapsing like a limp doll in front of the mirror, alternately laughing and staring at her reflection.

"She's gone stark raving mad," Nia stated in a flat voice.

"I don't think so, unless we're all mad right now," Davo replied judiciously.

"Well, we can't just sit here and let her spite us," Nia exclaimed, rousing to indignation. "She's just got to do her part."

"The show must go on?" Escalus asked sarcastically. "Not this one."

"I apologize to everyone," Prane began, rising to his feet. "Ansra's grievance is with me. You shall not be the victims of it."

"Christ, Prane, spare us that role," Davo exploded.

"No role, the solution is simple," the Solar went on his voice and manner so matter-of-fact that the accusation of heroics was void. "As director, I know every single line in this play. In fact, I have complete recall of some 212 ancient, medieval, classical, atomic, and modern dramas."

"You'd die under the strain," Kurla cried, throwing her arms around him.

He disengaged himself, smiling tenderly at her.

"I'm dying anyway, my dear. I'd prefer a good exit line."

"Next week East Lynne," roared Helva, successfully shocking everyone alert with her mocking laughter. Prane was deeply hurt, which Helva found a trifle healthier than heroic self-sacrifice. "Now will everyone calm down. All is not lost because Ansra Colmer is a vicious, vengeful bitch. In the first place, Solar Prane, we don't want the Corviki possessed of our entire bankroll in one mass cathartic purge. One play, Romeo and Juliet, which has rolled 'em up by the fronds, is all we contracted for. And we shall give it to them and then accelerate out of their sphere of influence as fast as I can blow my jets. I shall strongly, urgently recommend that we do not darken their dominance again until our bright boys figure out how to cushion our fragile psyches against Corviki feedback.

"And, Solar Prane, you are not the only person on board with perfect recall. I know this may sound fatuous but I, too, probably Davo as well, possibly our Escalus, know every bloody line of R & J, too. All three of us are physically and emotionally better able than you to go back down to Beta Corvi ..."

"Listen to me" she bellowed when everyone began to protest. She shifted to the voice that signified a broad smile and hammed it. "This is Your Captain speaking!" And as they broke into laughter, became dead serious. "I, Helva, have the final responsibility for this mission and for everyone on board the ship."

"I know all of Romeo and Juliet, too. Used to play Juliet, you know, when I was in my first hundred," Nia said quietly, before Helva could continue. "And you've forgotten something, Helva. A very essential point. It's performances, on Beta Corvi, not rehearsals, which rock us. I feel sure I could cope with a rehearsal situation, with the customary halts and breaks needed to teach understudies. We don't even have to rehearse the full seven hours. Not if these Corviki want the plays so bad. We can call the tune." Then her expression changed and she glanced toward the women's cabin, where Ansra was laughing softly. "And I'll be goddamned if I'11 let that bitch close the most successful show I've ever been in."

Escalus roared with laughter and embraced Nia in a mighty hug.

"By the toenails of the seven saints of Scorpius, neither will I!"

"I'm game, too," Benvolio agreed, "and bugger her!" he added with a rude gesture in Ansra's direction.

"Look, Helva, get the Corviki to give us another day's rest," Chadress said. "Thea we'll all go down and finish the job. The show must go on!" "Who'll do Juliet?" Davo asked and then answered his own question by pointing directly at Kurla. "You'll do Juliet."

"Oh, no. Not me!"

"Why not, my sweet young love?" asked Prane, pulling her hands from her cheeks and kissing her tenderly before them all. "You're more Juliet than she at her best."

"I'm worried about only one thing," Escalus said then. "I don't like her here, with us, there," and his forefinger punctuated his words with stabs in the proper directions.

"A very good point," Davo agreed with a whistle.

"No problem," Helva assured them. "Miss Colmer is ... resting, I believe the professional term is. I shall encourage it." And she proceeded to flood the pilot's cabin with sleepy gas.

The Manager signaled acceptance, emitting relief that the problem had a solution. Helva sent everyone off to bed after a protein-rich meal. Kurla and Nia preferred to bunk on the couches despite the fact that Helva had cleared the gas from the cabin. Kurla agreed to administer a timed sedative to Ansra to keep her unconscious while there was no one in the ship.

The cast voted to limit the first rehearsal to 4 hours. However, all apprehensions vanished when it became evident to the troupe that the understudies were very discreet with energy emissions. In fact, back at the ship again, there was a mood close to hysterical relief.

"Those Corviki are the quickest studies I've ever worked with. Tell 'em once and they just don't forget," Escalus exclaimed.

"Yes, they are holding back, aren't they," Davo agreed. "But will they know how much to emit, to make the show come alive? I mean, there's that old difference between amateur and pro."

"Good point, Davo," Prane said, "and one I discussed with Manager. I talked over unconserved energy levels with him and he assured me that he had taken measurements during our performance so that they will know when to emit energy to produce the proper reactions. He has great dominance, that man, great dominance."

"And a fine sense of level integrities, too," Chadress added, nodding thoughtfully.

"You sound more Corviki than human," Nia said in her droll way.

Prane and Chadress looked at her, their expressions puzzled.

"Well, you do," Kurla agreed.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know," Prane said into the silence, but, to Helva, his joviality sounded forced.

The second rehearsal went so well that Prane decided only one, slightly longer additional session would complete the contract.

"Let's get it over with then," Escalus said. "There's something seductive about that freak-out place that gets to you. I've a hard time thinking human."

Escalus was right, Helva thought. She found it all too easy to think in Corvikian terms. And Prane and Chadless seemed to have moved theatre semantics into another frame of reference entirely. She'd heard them discussing staging in terms of excitation phases, shell movements, particle emissions, subshell directionals until she wondered if they were talking theatre or nuclear physics.

She kept an eye on Prane, anyhow. Kurla was too, but playing Juliet to Prane's Romeo was overloading her circuits sufficiently to cloud her discretionary ... Helva caught herself up sharply. The sooner they all got away from here, the better.

She watched Kurla administer an additional sedative to Ansra. The woman had been kept unconscious for 40 hours. Five more wouldn't hurt her. It had certainly improved the ship's atmosphere.

She told Kurla that she'd be down directly and then checked all circuitry on the ship. Once the Corviki removed that power block they could leave, but she wanted no last-minute delays.

Prane was offstage when she got down, dominating with his understudy. She found hers and then was swept into scene ii of the fourth act.

The Corviki had more trouble this cycle controlling their suppressed energy. It occurred to Helva that Davo need not have worried that the dramatic content would be lacking. Remove all the instructors with their frail spirits, and the Corviki would deliver every bit of excitation required by the formulae.

Helva had to expend effort now to control excitement. Prane did, too, for as he and his understudy, the two Balthasars beside them, waited to enter the churchyard for Romeo's death scene, he seemed to be leaking energy.

"The time controls are fixed?" he asked nervously. "They cannot be altered?"

He was on before Helva could answer.

The rehearsal was soon over. The Manager had to exert tremendous control over his spontaneous emissions as he complimented the actors. He announced that the information on isotope stabilization had been sent to the ship in a specially prepared container, and that the ship's power was unblocked. He kept emitting on such a broad baud that Helva felt the insidious tug of entropy and resolutely made her farewells.

Transferring back, it took her a moment, a moment of regret that seemed an eternity, to get her bearings. She detected the container neatly secured in her engine room, violently radioactive as yet, so it had better stay where it was.

Someone groaned in the dimly lit cabin. Dimly lit? But she hadn't lowered the lights!

She brought up every light in the ship, scanning the pilot's cabin for Ansra. The bed was empty. How had she thrown off the drug? Helva did a searching scan and found Ansra, crouched down by Prane's body. In her hands were the wires that led to the transceivers on Prane and Kurla.

"Ansra, that's the same as murder!" Helva roared, trying with sheer volume to stun the woman. With the determination of vengeance, Ansra ripped the helmets from their users and tried to tear the units apart.

Even as Ansra was acting, Helva triggered the return on the transceivers, desperately hoping that she'd forestall Ansra's intention. It seemed so long, with the woman's harsh panting as metronome, until transceiver lights winked out across the rim of the helmets. On one, the light remained. On Chadress.

"Davo! Davo!" Helva shouted.

The actor, shaking his head as the urgency of her voice roused him, responded dazedly. Then he saw Ansra, saw what she was doing and launched himself at her. Davo's thrust pinned her against the far wall as other members of the cast began to revive.

"Escalus, help Davo with that crazy woman," Helva ordered, for Ansra was twisting and screaming, beating at Davo with maddened strength. "Benvolio, come on, man. Snap out of it. Check Chadress. How's his pulse?"

Benvolio leaned to the limp body beside Mm. "Too slow, I think. It's so... so faint."

"I've got to get back to Corvi. Someone, Nia, you're awake. Find two usable transceivers in the mess Ansra made of them and put 'em on Prane and Kurla. I've got to get them back here."

"Wait, Helva." She heard Davo call as she was in the act of transferring.

The Manager was beside her. And so were the shells that were undeniably Prane, Kurla, and Chadress. Their pressure dominances were overwhelming.

"Stay with us, Helva. Stay with us. It's a new life, brand new, with all the power in the universe to control. Why go back to a sterile life in an immobile envelope? Stay with us."

Too tempted, too terrified to listen further, Helva retreated to the safety of her ship, the sanctuary of the only security she knew.

"Helva!" Davo's voice rang in all her ears.

"I'm back," she murmured.

"Thank God. I was afraid you'd stay with them."

"You knew they'd stay?"

"Even without Ansra's help," Davo admitted. Beyond him Nia nodded.

"It's the answer for Kurla and Prane, you know," Nia said. "Hell, they can combine energies now," and her laugh was mirthless.

"But Chadress?"

"Shock you, huh, that a brawn would defect?" Davo asked sympathetically. "But he wouldn't be a brawn much longer, would he, Helva?"

"And what if I had stayed?"

"Well," Davo admitted, "Chadress didn't think you could, but he did think you should."

"It was a case of being where I am needed, Davo. And sometimes you have to help by not doing anything, I guess," she added, more to herself. She looked then toward the four breathing but lifeless bodies. "Four." she cried aloud, stunned to identify Ansra, laid beside the others. "What did you do? How could you do it?"

"Easy," Nia replied, shrugging negligently. "A case of the punishment fitting the crime. Besides, the Corviki are better qualified to deal with unstable energies than we are, Helva. Can't we leave now?"

"Manager said the exchange had been made," Escalus said. "Have they unblocked your power?"

"Yes," Helva sighed, unwilling to act yet.

"Helva," Davo murmured gently, his hand palm down on the titanium column, "Helva, the play was the thing, wherein to catch the conscience."

As she wearily fed the return voyage tape into the computer, his words echoed in her mind like a gentle absolution.

With an exquisite sense of reprieve, Helva watched official debriefing experts disperse to their waiting vehicles that clustered in the floodlights at the base of the XH-834 like energy motes ... Helva censored that analogy. Night-piercing lights blinked on, jabbed in crisscross webs as the groundcars turned and wheeled. All momentarily were parallel, outlining the darkened lower stories of Regulus Base tower. Not all the vehicles made for this structure, Helva noted. Some darted beyond, out of the Base complex, into the distant metropolis.

Shell-people were presumably inexhaustible, but Helva felt drained and depressed. She was not sure which experience had been the worse, coping with Beta Corvi or with the repetitive questioning of the affair by singleminded specialists. She could appreciate why Prane had made use of mindtrap to retard neuron loss. Had she no memory banks to scan, she might cheerfully have forgotten much of what had happened. Too bad she couldn't.

Helva sighed. Not, Helva, the XH-834, sleek BB ship of Central Worlds Medical Service, but Helva, the woman.

They encase us in titanium shells, place the shells in titanium bulkheads and consider us invulnerable. Physical injury is the least of the harmful accidents that this universe inflicts on its inhabitants; it is soonest mended.

Lights began to appear in the Base Tower and Helva was perversely delighted. So, others would have a sleepless night tonight. They deserve it, unsettling her fragile resolution of the Beta Corvi affair with their barrage of questions. How powerful was the Corvi community? How large were the individual entities? How long did she believe the human/Corviki shells that contained Prane, Kurla, Chadress, and Ansra would retain their previous loyalties and memories? How soon could, should a second expedition attempt to broach their atmosphere? What other mediums of exchange would Helva recommend, assuming Prane's encyclopedia of drama was bled from him? And why did she feel that the Corviki environment was so dangerous to the human mind? Could she explain the dangers? Could she recommend preventive measures to be used in preconditioning?

There was no consolation in the fact that every other member of the mission was also being closely interrogated, prodded and probed, physically as well as mentally. At least she was spared that, although the shell medics had run an acidity test and checked the intake on the nutrients that sustained her. There had been a rise in the protein flow, which was deemed consonant with the unusual activity required of her.

The Base computers were going to get a workout tonight, but she didn't want to have to think at all. Not about the Corviki, at any rate, or the four humans who had opted to remain in Corviki shells, to exchange and lose energy in the new sub-orbital ...

"I don't want to think at all," Helva said aloud.

Restlessly she scanned outside, her glance reaching briefly the lighted windows in the brawn barracks. She felt no desire to place a call there. She hadn't the requisite flexibility to enjoy contact with new personalities, usually such a reviving and stimulating experience for her. She didn't want, either, to be alone tonight.

"This time I get a brawn before I move a centimeter from this base," she vowed.

The Service cemetery where Jennan lay buried was mercifully lost in darkness kilometers across the huge Base field, but she began to feel that distance psychologically diminishing.

Rather than dwell on that closed chapter of her life, she masochistically reviewed the last few hours. Had she really given them all the information available to her? Was she subconsciously withholding a single important fact or minor observation? Had she really analyzed the schizophrenic trauma of the human mind in the Corvi shell? Had she ...

A groundcar braked to a rocking drop at the base and someone activated the passenger lift, which she had not withdrawn when the last of the debriefing group had left.

"Who the hell ..."

"Parollan!" a sharp voice reassured her in the Supervisor's curt way.

As her Service Supervisor, Niall Parollan had naturally been present during debriefing. He had kept to the role of arbiter, speaking only when the experts had got excited or too insistent on points that Helva was unable to clarify. She had been grateful as well as impressed by his unexpectedly deft handling of the incidents. Evidently Parollan enjoyed considerable prestige in spite of his blunt manners. Was he returning for a private session?

He stepped into the airlock, feet spread, arms dangling at his side. He was glaring at her column with unexpected belligerence.

"Now what have I done?" Helva asked, masking a sudden apprehension.

As he broke the pose and swaggered forward, Helva wondered if he had been drinking heavily.

"I claim refuge, milady," he replied, bowing with exaggerated flourishes.

"And a cup of coffee?"

"You're out of it. Those fardling circuit-clowns drank it all up. But you're off bounds and incommunicado 'sfar as Cencom knows, my orders, m'love -so you're the safest place for me to be."

"You're not in trouble over the Beta Corvi ..."

"Trouble?" and he sat down on the couch facing her column, suddenly collapsing limply back against the cushions. "Hell no. Not my Helva gal. Not Niall Parollan, Supervisor extraordinary. But we are," and a wild sweep of his arm suggested galactic rather than service parameters. "Well, you're not to be bothered, and I'm not to be bothered, and by morning, maybe the ol' brains'll be ready for more draining and dredging and ..." his voice ground down to a whisper.

Helva thought he had gone to sleep, but then she saw that he was regarding her through narrowed eyes.

"Did anyone remember to tell you how far you exceeded optimimum expectation? Did the Chief remember to mention you've got two more commendations on your distinguished record? And a whopping bonus!" He pounded the couch in emphasis. "You'll Pay-off, if you keep up this rate." Then his voice softened. "Did I remember to thank you, Helva, for pulling off a lousy, fardling, stinking job you got conned into ..."

"Not by you, Parollan ..."

"Ha!" Niall Parollan arched his body to let out that burst of laughter before he sank again into the cushions. "Well, you did a great job, gal. I don't think another ship could have pulled it off."

"Maybe another ship would have brought all her passengers back,"

"Of all the noisome fardles, Helva," and Parollan sat straight up, "I don't need that kind of irrational thinking from you! Prane and Kurla had their own reasons for transition; so did Chadress. All three profited. As for Ansra Colmer, best place for that bitch. Outsmarted herself for once. There is true justice in the universe, and the Corviki never heard of Hammurabi!"

He lay back again, lacing his fingers behind his head.

"I like to see *em sweat, those nardy bastards in Procedures," he chuckled.

"Over the bodies? Wouldn't decent burial be indicated by now?"

"Why? The bodies are still clinically alive, Helva. Your body is clinically dead," he added with utter disregard for the tacit strictures on that subject in the presence of a shell-person. "And neither you nor I, nor anyone else on this Base tonight thinks you're a zombie. What does constitute death, Helva? The lack of mind, or soul, or what-have-you? Or the lack of independent motion? You're mobile enough, my pet, and you can't move a muscle."

"You're drunk, Niall Parollan."

"Oh, no! Parollan's a long way from drunk. I'm just hanging loose, gal, hanging loose." He sat up in a single movement that denied any impairment of motor control. "Ethically, socially, you delivered four corpses to that Fleet ship outside Beta Corvi. Four mechanically functioning but empty husks. And their original inhabitants, owners, what-have-you, won't be back in 'em."

He was on his feet, striding toward Helva. "There's your chance, gal. Opt out ... opt out into Kurla's body, it's the youngest. Or Ansra's. Or Chadress' for that matter, if you'd like a change of pace."

For one blinding second of whirling possibilities, Helva considered the staggering proposal. As she had fleetingly considered remaining in the Corvi shell. Had she really presented an unbiased report to the specialists?

"Presuming, of course, that I want to be a mobile human. Remember, Parollan," she managed to answer in a reasonable voice, "I've just been in another body. I find I prefer myself."

Parollan was staring at her with an inscrutable intentness. He put one hand out to stroke the smooth metal on the exact spot where the seam closed access to her inner shell.

"Well put, Helva, well put." He turned and walked to the galley. He was dialing for soup, not a stimulant, Helva noticed with relief. He sat down again in the main cabin before he broke the heat seal. The wisp of escaping steam seemed to mesmerize him, for he shook his head as the pop of the released top broke the semitrance.

"I didn't think you'd go it," he remarked in a casual tone.

"Why did you ask then? Testing, Supervisor?"

He glanced up, chuckling at the purring tone in her voice.

"Not you, m'gal ..."

"And I am not your gal..."

"Irrelevant!" and he took a careful sip of the hot soup.

"Then why did you ask?" she insisted.

He shrugged. "Seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get you out of that titanium chastity belt."

Laughter burst from Helva. "I've been out. On Corvi."

"Tried it once and didn't like it?"

"Movement? Freedom?" she asked, deliberately ignoring the double meaning expressed in the cocked eyebrow and malicious grin on Parollan's face.

"Physical movement," he qualified, his manner wary. "Physical freedom."

"Define 'physical'. As this ship, I have more physical power, more physical freedom, than you ever will know. I think, I feel, I breathe. My heart beats, blood does flow through my veins, my lungs do work: not as yours, but they are functioning."

"So are the hearts and veins and lungs of those four ... four nothings in the life support room of Base Hospital. But they are dead."

"Am I?"

"Are you?"

"You're drunk, Parollan," she accused in a flat, cold voice.

"I'm not drunk, Helva. I'm discussing a deep moral issue with you and you evade me."

"Evade Niall Parollan? Or Supervisor Parollan?"

"Niall Parollan."

"Why are you discussing this deep moral issue with Helva, Niall Parollan?"

Unexpectedly he shrugged and leaned back, his shoulders sagging as he lapped his fingers around the soup cup and regarded its contents moodily.

"Passes time," he said finally. "We both have time on our hands tonight. Time that must be passed some way or other. Silly to waste our valuable time (and he gave a sardonic laugh) in small talk. Might just as well discuss a deep moral issue which, I might point out, you dumped into our laps. Which no one's going to resolve anyway. You should've made the Corvi clear their garbage before you cleared their fartful atmosphere. Say, did you smell that stuff they breathe?"

Helva found herself answering his question while another part of her rapidly churning mind wondered at his remarkable behavior.

"I, Helva, have no olfactory sense, so I, Helva, wouldn't have noticed how the Corviki atmosphere 'smelled'. None of the others mentioned it, so I assume that, for Corvi entities, the atmospheric odor was unexceptional."

"Aha!" The thin forefinger jabbed at her accusingly. "You don't have that physical ability."

"Nor am I sure that I want it ... except to smell coffee, which everyone says smells particularly pleasant."

"Remember to order some in the morning."

"Order's already on file with Commissary," Helva said sweetly.

"That's my gal."

"I'm not your gal. And, at the risk of being a bore, why are you here, Niall Parollan?"

"I don't want to be bothered by those fardling specs," he muttered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Base Tower, "and I would be if they could reach me. They can't here because Cencom is not allowed to admit any calls to you, Helva XH-834, until 0800 because you, Helva m'gal, have had enough of them for one revolution. Haven't you?" His question crackled in the air. "Don't deny it," he advised when she didn't answer immediately. "I know you well enough ... oh, I know you, gal, like no other man ever has ... and you were so close to telling them to stuff it, you were so close to ..." his voice trailed off briefly. "This assignment was a lot rougher on you than you'll ever admit."

She said nothing.

He nodded and took another mouthful of soup.

"You aren't drunk," she said.

"I told you that." He grinned at her.

"I hadn't realized," she went on in a light tone to hide the fact that she was deeply touched by his unexpected empathy, "that ship-sitting was a function of a Supervisor."

He waggled a lean finger expressively. "We have wide discretionary latitude."

"And am I really incommunicado until 0800 or were you merely keeping me from meeting personable brawns?"

"Hell no," he explained, his eyebrows arching in protest. "That's absolute fact you can check out. You can call out, you know. It's just no one can call in. And ..."

"You're here to divert me from calling the brawns."

"That woman's got brawns on the brain!" he exploded. "Go ahead," he urged, "call the brawns in. Rouse the whole barracks. We'll have a swinging party ..." He was halfway to the console.

"Why are you here?"

"Hey, moderate your voice, gal. I'm here because you're the safest place for me to be." He turned back to her again, grinning wickedly. "Sure you don't want to call the brawn barracks?"

"Positive. Why are you escaping?"

"Because," and he dropped down onto the couch again, making himself quite comfortable. "I've had it with their nardy questions and suspicions and ..."

"Suspicions?" Helva pounced on the word.

Niall made a crude noise. "They (and his fingers flicked in the direction of the Tower's lit windows) got fardling damned theories about schizoid brains and blocks and that kind of drift."

"About me?"

Again the expressive rude noise. "I know you, gal, and so does Railly and we're taking none of that crap about you"

"Thanks."

"Don't get snide with me, Helva," and Parollan's voice turned hard. "I'll make you work your ass off for the Service. I'll make you take assignments you don't want because they're good for you and the Service ..."

"Good for me? Like the Corvi affair?"

"Yes, damn your eyes, good for you, Helva. For the woman inside that armor plate."

"I thought you were urging me to come out of my armor plate ... into Kurla's body."

Parollan was still. His angry eyes seemed to bore through the column into her shell. Abruptly he relaxed and leaned back again, apparently at ease, but Helva noticed the small contraction of jaw muscles.

"Yes, I was, wasn't I?" he said mildly. With a sigh, he swiveled his feet up on the couch and yawned in an exaggerated fashion. "You know, I've never heard you sing. Would you oblige?"

"To keep you awake? Or would you prefer a lullaby?"

Niall Parollan yawned again, laced his fingers behind his head, crossed his neatly booted ankles and stared up at the ceiling.

"Dealer's choice."

Surprisingly, Helva felt like singing.

The Ship Who Dissembled

"Brain ships don't disappear," Helva said in what she hoped was a firm, no-argument tone.

Teron stuck his chin out in a way that caused him to appear a neckless Neanderthal. This mannerism had passed from amusing through annoying to unendurable.

"You heard Central," Teron replied at his most didactic. "They do disappear, because they have disappeared."

"The fact of disappearance is inconsistent with shell psychology," Helva said, barely managing to restrain herself from shouting at top volume. She had the feeling that she might force him to understand by overwhelming him with sound alone. She knew this was basically illogical, but in trying to cope with Teron over the past galactic year, she found she reacted more and more on an emotional rather than a reasonable level.

This partnership was clearly intolerable-she would even go so far as to say, degrading, and she would allow it to continue no longer than it took them to finish this assignment and return to Regulus Base.

Helva had had enough of Teron. She did not care two feathers in a jet-vent if the conclusion wasn't mutual. It had been difficult for her to admit she had found herself in a situation she couldn't adjust to, but she and Teron were clearly incompatible. She would just have to admit to an error of judgment and correct it. It was the only sensible course of action.

Helva groaned inwardly. He was contagious. She was talking more and more as he did.

"Your loyalty is commendable, if, in this instance, misplaced," Teron was saying pompously. "The facts are there. Four brain-controlled ships engaged on Central Worlds commissions have disappeared without trace, their accompanying pilots with them. Fact: a ship can alter its tape, a pilot cannot. Fact: the ships have failed to appear at a scheduled port-of-call. Fact: the ships have failed to appear in the adjacent sectors of space nearest their previous or projected ports-of-call. Therefore, they have disappeared. The ships must have altered the projected journey for no known reason. Therefore the ships are unreliable organisms. This conclusion follows the presented data and is unalterable. Any rational intelligence must admit the validity of that conclusion."

He gave her that irritating smirk she had originally thought a sweet smile.

Helva counted slowly to 1,000 by 10s. When she spoke again, her voice was under perfect control.

"The presented data is incomplete. It lacks motivation. There is no reason for those four ships to have disappeared for their own purposes. They weren't even badly indebted. Indeed, the DR was within 3 standard years of solvency.'* Just as I am, she thought. "Therefore, and on the basis of privileged information available to me ..." she came as close as makes no never mind to spitting out the pronoun, "your conclusion is unacceptable."

"I cannot see what privileged information, if you actually have any," Teron awarded her a patronizing smile, "could change my conclusion, since Central has also reached it."

There, Helva thought to herself, he had managed to drag in old infallible authority and that is supposed to stop me in my tapes.

It was useless to argue with him anyway. He was, as Niall Parollan had once accused her of being, stubborn for the wrong reasons. He was also pigheaded, dogmatic, insensitive, regulation-hedged and so narrowly oriented as to prevent any vestige of imagination or intuitive thinking from coloring his mental processes for a microsecond.

She oughtn't to have thought of Niall Parollan. It did her temper no good. That officious little pipsqueak had paid her another of his unsolicited, unofficial visits to argue her out of choosing the Acthionite.

"He passed his brawn training on theory credits. He's been slated for garbage runs, not you," Niall Parollan had cried, pacing her main cabin.

"And you are not the person who will be his partner. His profile-tape looks extremely compatible to me."

"Use your wits, girl. Just look at him. He's all muscle and no heart, too perfectly good looking to be credible. Christ, he's ... he's an android, complete with metal brainworks, programmed in a rarified atmosphere. He'll drive you batty."

"He's a reliable, well-balanced, well-read, well-adjusted ..."

"And you're a spiteful, tin-plated virgin," said Parollan and for the second time in their acquaintance, he charged out of her cabin without a backward look.

Now Helva had to admit Niall Parollan had been demoralizingly accurate about Brawn Teron of Acthion. The only kind thing that could be said about Teron, in Helva's estimation, was that he was a complete change from any other partner she had had, temporarily or permanently.

And if he called her an unreliable organism once more, she would blow the lock on him.

However, Teron considered he had silenced her with the last telling remark. He seated himself at his pilot control board, flexed his fingers as he always did, and then ran his precious and omnipotent data through the computer, checking their journey tape. It was obvious he was out to thwart any irrational desire Helva might have to change their journey and make them disappear.

Teron worked methodically and slowly, his broad brow unwrinkled, his wide-cheeked face serene, his brown eyes never straying from the task at hand.

How, under the suns of heaven, did I ever have the incredible lack of insight to pick him? Helva wondered, the adrenalin level in her shell still high. I must have been out of my ever-loving, capsulated mind. Maybe my nutrient fluid is going acid. When I get back to Regulus, I am going to demand an endocrine check. Something is wrong with me.

No, no, no. Helva contradicted herself. There is nothing wrong with me that getting rid of Teron won't cure. He's got me doubting my sanity and I know I'm sane or I wouldn't be this ship.

Remember that, Helva, she told herself. It's quite possible that, before this trip ends, he'll have persuaded you you're a menace to Central Worlds Autonomy because your intelligence is so unreliable the safest thing for the known world is for you to opt out. Him and his assumption that a brain ship must be an unreliable organism because they/she/he (never it, please) could digest data, ignore the irrelevant, and proceed on seemingly illogical courses to logical and highly successful ends. Such as the tangle she and Kira had got into on Alioth.

And to quote particulars, she, Helva, had already been unreliable several times in her short career as a brain ship. Teron had been 'kind enough' to point out these deviations to her, as well as a far more logical course of action under all the same conditions, and he had admonished her never to act outside cut orders while he, Teron of Acthion, was her brawn partner. She was to do nothing, repeat, nothing, without clearing first with him and then with Central. An intelligent organism was known by its ability to follow orders without deviation.

"And you actually mean," Helva had remarked laughingly the first time Teron had made this solemn pronouncement, she had still had her sense of humor in those days, "that, if our orders require me to enter an atmosphere my subsequent investigations proved was corrosive to my hull and would result in our deaths, I should follow such orders ... to the death, that is."

"Irresponsible orders are not given Central Worlds Ships," Teron replied reprovingly.

"Half a league, half a league Half a league onward ..."

"I do not understand what half leagues have to do with the principle under discussion," he said coldly.

"I was trying to make a subtle point. I will rephrase."

"In a concise, therefore comprehensible, manner, if you please."

"Orders can be cut without foreknowledge of unavailable but highly relevant facts. Such as the beforementioned corrosive atmospheres ..."

"Hypothetical ..."

"but valid as a case in point. We do, you must admit, often approach relatively unexplored star systems. Therefore, it is entirely possible, not merely hypothetical, that precut orders can require an intelligent and mature reevaluation which may require what appears to be insurbordinate alteration of those same orders and/or rank disobedience to those before-mentioned orders."

Teron had shaken his head, not sadly, because Helva was certain he had experienced no deep human emotions in his life, but reprovingly.

"I know now why Central Worlds insist on a human pilot as commander of the brain-controlled ships. They are necessary, so necessary when an unreliable organism is nominally in control of so powerful an instrument as this ship."

Helva had sputtered in astonishment at his misconception. She had been about to point out that the pilot control board did not override her. She had the override on the pilot.

"There will come a day," Teron had continued inexorably, "when such poor expedients are no longer necessary. Automatic operations will be perfected to such a fine degree, human brains will no longer be needed."

"They use human beings," Helva had replied, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.

"Ah, yes, human beings. Fallible creatures at best, we are, subject to so many pressures, so frail a barque for so great a task." Teron tended to go in for homiletics at the drop of a gauge. "To err is human, to forgive divine." He sighed. "And when this human element, so prone to error, is eliminated, when automation is perfected, ah, mere, Helva, is the operative word, when it is perfected, there will be no more need for such stopgap techniques as Central Worlds must presently employ. When that perfection is achieved, ships will be truly reliable." He patted the computer console patronizingly.

Helva had stifled a monosyllablic comment. Historical and incontrovertible arguments welled up from her schooling and conditioning years. These were based, she abruptly realized, on incidents that unfortunately tended to support his peculiar theory of unreliability, however sane the outcome. In each instance, the brain ships had acted by ignoring or revising previous orders as the unusual circumstances they encountered required them to do. By Teron's unswerving logic, intelligence itself, whether shell or mobile, is unreliable. Helva could not see him ever admitting that intelligent conclusions are not always logical.

And right now, every scrap of intelligence, instinct, training, conditioning, and reason told Helva that brain ships do not just disappear. Not four in a row. Not four in less than a Regulan month. One in 100 years, yes, that was possible, logical and probable. But there was always some hint, some deducible reason. Like the 732, psychotic with grief on Alioth.

Why had she allowed Kira to leave her when that assignment was over? Kira would have been quite of Helva's mind in this matter, but Helva did not see the faintest hope of convincing Teron that multiple disappearances were so preposterous. Because it involved some intuition, of which Teron had none.

How had this didacticism of his escaped Psychprobe? And another thing she had noticed about him, whether he would ever admit it consciously or not, the very concept of cyborgs like Helva was repugnant to Teron. A brawn was very much aware, if the majority of Central World's populations were not, that behind the ship's titanium bulkhead reposed a shell, containing an inert, but-complete human body.

If only Teron weren't so thoroughly irritating, she could almost feel sorry for him. And before he had antagonized her, she had actually understood this drive to perfection that motivated every thought and action. Teron was psychotically afraid of error, of making any mistake because mistake implied failure and failure was inadmissible. If he made no mistakes, he would never be guilty of failure and would be a success.

Well, Helva mused, I'm not afraid of making a mistake and I'm not afraid of admitting failure. And I sure made one with Teron. When he starts mistrusting shell people, he is not good to me or Central Worlds. Well, I won't be vindictive. I'll request a change and take the fine. It won't set me too far back in the red. And with a new partner and a couple of good assignments, I'll still Pay-off. But Teron goes off my deck!

The decision of divorce, now subvocalized, made her feel much better.

When Teron woke the next 'day', he checked, as he always did, every gauge, dial and meter, forward and aft. This practice took him most of the morning. A similar rundown would have taken Helva 10 minutes at the outside. By custom and by any other brawn but Teron, the check was left to the brain partner. Wearily Helva had to read back to Teron her findings, which he corroborated with his own.

"Shipshape and bristol fashion," he commented as he always did when the results tallied ... as they always did. Then he seated himself at the pilot console awaiting touchdown on Tania Borealis.

As the TH-834 had had planetfall on Durrell, fourth planet before Tania Borealis, the spaceport was familiar with Teron; familiar with and contemptuous to the point of addressing all remarks to Helva rather than to her brawn. If this complimented Helva, it made Teron harder to deal with later. He responded by being twice as officious and pompous with the port officials and the Health Service Captain to whom their cargo of rare drugs had been assigned. A certain amount of extra precaution was required, considering the nature and potency of the drugs, but it was offensive of Teron to tight-beam back to Central Worlds for a replica of Captain Brandt's ID Cube before turning over the invaluable packet to him.

To make matters worse, Niall Parollan, being Section Supervisor, had had to take the call, and Helva caught all the nuances in his carefully official words.

Helva seethed inwardly. It would have to be Parollan. But she had the heretofore unexperienced urge to burst outward from her shell in all directions. Parollan would be unbearably righteous no matter when she filed intent to change brawns. There were three more stops, one at Tania Australis and the two Alula counterparts, before she would touch down at Regulus Base. Better let Niall Parollan have his laugh now so he'd be over it by the time she did ditch Teron.

So, girding herself for Parollan's smug reception, Helva flashed a private signal for him to keep the tight beam open. Teron, slave that he was to protocol, would see Captain Brandt off the ship, to the waiting landcar. She'd have a chance to file her intention then.

"Tower to the TH-834. Permission to board you requested by the Antiolathan Xixon," said Durrell Tower.

"Permission refused," Helva said without so much as a glance in Teron's direction.

"Pilot Teron speaking," the brawn interjected forcefully, striding to the console and opening the local channel direct. "What is the purpose of this request?"

"Don't know. The gentlemen are on their way by groundcar."

Teron disconnected and glanced out the open airlock. Brandt's car was just passing the oncoming vehicle midfield.

"You have no right to issue orders independently, Helva, when the request has been properly stated."

"Have you ever heard of an Antiolathan Xixon?" Helva demanded. "And isn't this a restricted mission?"

"I am perfectly aware of the nature of our mission and I have never heard of an Antiolathan Xixon. That doesn't mean there isn't one. And, as it sounds religious and one of our prime Service directives is to be respectful to any and all religious orders, we should receive him."

"True enough. But may I remind Pilot Teron that I am his senior in service by some years and that I have access to memory banks, mechanical memory banks, less prone to lapsus memoriae than the human mind? And there is no Xixon."

"The request was issued properly," Teron repeated.

"Shouldn't we consult Central first?"

"There are some actions that are indicated without recourse to official sanction."

"Oh really?"

The groundcar had arrived and the Xixon people had dutifully requested permission to board. Their arrival meant no chance for Helva to speak privately with Central. She was doubly infuriated by Teron's childish insistence on seeing whoever these Xixon were. She knew perfectly well, if she had countermanded his order, he would have been in the right of it to call her down. But since he had taken the initiative, naturally it was all in order.

The four men stepped on board, two in plain gray tunics, stepping smartly inside the lock as though the vanguard of a great dignitary. Sidearms hung from their belts and both wore curious cylindrical whistles on neckchains. The third man, gray of hair but vigorous, obsequiously ushered in the fourth, a whitehaired man of imposing stature in a long, gray-black robe. He fingered a whistle, larger than the guards, but similar in design, as if it were some sacred talisman.

There was something not at all reassuring, Helva noted, in that obsequious performance. For the grayhaired man, in the action of ushering, was missing no single detail of the cabin's appointments. Just as he switched his direction to put him beside Teron, who was still at the control console, the old man reached the titanium bulkhead behind which Helva resided. The maneuvers were almost completed when something in Helva's mind went wild with alarm.

"Teron, they're imposters," she cried, remembering with sudden hope that the tight beam to Central Worlds was still open.

The white-haired man lost all trace of formal dignity and, mouthing syllables in a frightful cadence, stabbed a finger towards her column.

Helva, in the brief moment before she lost consciousness, saw the two guards blowing on their whistles, the piercing notes sonically jamming the ship's circuitry. She saw Teron slump to the floor of the cabin, felled by the gray-haired man. Then the anesthetic gas the old man had released into her shell overwhelmed her.

My circuits are out of order, Helva mused ... and then returned to acute awareness.

She saw nothing. She heard nothing. Not so much as a whisper of sound. Not so much as a tiny beam of light.

Helva fought a primeval wave of terror that all but washed her into insanity.

I think, so I live, she told herself with all the force of her will. I can think and I can remember, rationally, calmly, what has happened, what can have happened.

The horror of complete isolation from sound and light was a micrometer away from utter domination of her ego. Coldly, dispassionately, Helva reviewed that final, flashing scene of treachery. The entrance of the four men, the arrangement of the two guards and their whistle-ornaments. A supersonic blast patterned to interfere with her circuitry, to paralyze her defense against the unauthorized activation of her emergency panel. The maneuvering of the third man to overpower Teron.

Now, Helva continued inexorably, this attack was engineered to overcome brawn and brain simultaneously. Only someone intimately connected with the Central Worlds would have access to the information needed to vanquish both mobile and immobile units. The release syllables, and the proper pitch and cadence at which they must be spoken, were highly guarded secrets, usually kept separate. For anyone to have known this information was shocking.

Helva's mind leaped to an obvious, but still startling conclusion. She knew now how the four brain ships had 'disappeared'. They had unquestionably been shanghaied in much the same way she had been. But why? She wondered. And where were the others? Incommunicado like herself? Or driven mad by ...

I refuse to consider that possibility for myself or any other shell personality, Helva told herself firmly.

Constructive thought, fierce concentration, will relieve the present tedium.

The first ship to disappear was the FT-687. They had also been on a drug run, picking up raw material, though, not distributing it. So had the RD-751 and the PF-699. This line of thought bore possibilities.

The drugs that she had been delivering were available only through application to Central Worlds and were delivered in minute quantities by special teams. A lOOcc ampul of Menkalite could poison the water of an entire planet, rendering its population mindless slaves. A granule of the same drug diluted in a massive protein suspension base would inoculate the inhabitants of several star systems against the virulent encephalitis plagues. Tucanite, a psychedelic compound, was invaluable for psychotherapy in catatonic and autistic cases, since it heightened perceptions and awareness of environment. The frail elders of Tucan had revived waning psychic powers with its use. Deadly as these drugs might be in one form, they were essential to millions in another and must be available. The damoclean sword of use and abuse forever swung perilously over the collective head of mankind.

Not even a shell-person was sacred from the machinations of a disturbed mind. Disturbed mind? Helva's thoughts ground down. Where was that idiot brawn of hers right now? Him and his Neanderthal attributes, his muscles would be very useful. She felt a distinct pleasure within herself as she recalled his being clouted wickedly by the third man. She hoped he was bruised, beaten, and bloodied, But at least he could see and hear without mechanical assistance ...

Helva felt every crevice of her mind quivering with the effects of sense deprivation. How long could she keep her mind channeled away from ...

Two households, both alike in dignity ...

I attempt from Love's fever to fly ...

Fly, I cannot see. Fly?

The qualify of mercy is not strained ...

It droppeth as the gentle rain from ...

No, not heaven. Portia will do me no good. The Bard has played me false when I have been his sturdy advocate on other shores.

In Injia's sunny clime where I used to spend my time ... Time I have too much of or not enough. Could it be that I am suspended midway between time and madness?"

There once was a bishop from Chichester

Who made all the saints in their niches stir ... I had a niche once, only I was moved out, not by a bishop, but a Xixon.

I should sit on a Xixon or fix on a Xixon or nix on a Xixon or ...

I cannot move. I cannot see. I cannot hear ...

Howlonghowlonghowlonghowlong? HOW LONG?

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one country to dissolve the ... I'm dissolving.

There is nothing I can think of in all space and time that does not bring me right back to ...

SOUND

A scraping metallic sound. But a SOUND upon her aural circuits. Like a hot iron in her brain, a fiery brand of sanity after the dense, thick, solid, infinite inquiet soundlessness. She screamed, but having no connections except the aural, screamed soundlessly.

Something was thundering: "I have reconnected your sound system!"

Helva toned the volume rapidly down to an acceptable level. The voice was harsh, whining, nasal, unpleasant, but the sense divinely welcome.

"You have been disconnected from your ship function."

The words made no immediate sense. She was listening to the glory of sound and the sensation of noise was unbelievable agony. It took a moment for those syllables to reform themselves into comprehensible tones.

"You have been connected to a limited audio-visual circuit to permit you to retain your sanity. Any abuse of this courtesy will result in further ..." a nasty laugh accompanied the threat, "if not permanent, deprivation."

Unexpectedly sight returned, an evil benison, because of the object in her lens. She could not suppress the scream.

"This is your idea of cooperation?" demanded the strident voice and a huge cavern, spiked with great ivory tusks, opened directly in front of her, pink and red and slimy white.

She adjusted vision hastily, putting the face into normal proportions. It was not a pleasant face even at proper size. It belonged to the man, no longer disguised as old, who had styled himself the Antiolathan Xixon.

"Cooperation?" Helva asked, confused.

"Yes, your cooperation or nothing," and the Xixon moved his hand to one side of her limited vision, wrapping his fingers around input leads.

"No. I'll go mad," Helva cried, alarmed, frightened.

"Mad?" and her tormentor laughed obscenely.

"You've plenty of company. But you shan't go mad ... not yet. I have a use for you."

A finger dominated her lens like a suspended projectile.

"No, no, fool, not like that!" her captor shrieked and dashed off to one side of her screen.

Desperately assembling her wits, Helva tuned up her hearing, sharpened her sight focus. She was facing a small audio-visual amplification panel into which her leads and those of ... yes ... she could count 12 other ... input lines were plugged. She had only one line of vision, straight ahead. Directly in front of her, before the panel, were two shells, trailing fine wires like fairy hair from their blunt tops. Within those shells existed two of her peers. There should be two more. Beside me? She had a peripheral glimpse of more wires. Yes, beside me.

Carefully, she drew against the power in the amplifier. A very limited capacity. To her left, whence the Xixon thing had gone, was the beginning of a complex interstellar communications unit from the look of it and the few dial readings she could see.

Xixon returned, smiling a mocking, smug smile at her.

"So you are the ship who sings. The Helva obscenity. May I present your fellow obscenities. Of course, Foro's company is limited to groans and howls. We kept him in the dark too long," and the Xixon howled with pure spite. "Delia's not much better, true, but she will speak if spoken to. Tagi and Merl had learned not to talk unless I address them. So shall you. For I have always wanted my own zoo of obscenities and I have them all in you. And you, my latest guest, will cheer my leisure hours with your incomparable voice. Will you not?"

Helva said nothing. She was instantly plunged into utter dark, utter soundlessness.

"He is mad himself. He is doing this to terrify me. I refuse to be terrified by a madman. I will wait. I will be calm. He has a use for me so he will not wait too long before giving me sight and sound again or he will defeat his purpose. I will wait. I will be calm. I will soon have sight and sound again. I will wait. I will be calm but soon, oh soon ...

"There now, my pretty awful, you've had time to reconsider my generosity."

Helva had indeed. She limited her capitulation to a monosyllable. The blessedness of sight and sound could not quite erase the endless hours of deprivation, yet she knew, from the chronometer on the panel board, that he had shut her off for a scant few minutes. It was frightening to be dependent on this vile beast.

She refined her vision, scanning his eyes closely. There was a faint but unmistakable tinge of blue to his skin tone that tagged him as either a native of Rho Puppis' three habitable worlds or a Tucanite addict. The latter seemed the more likely. Well, she had been carrying Tucanite and she knew the RD had, also.

"Feel like singing now?" His laugh was demoniac.

"Sir?" said a tentative and servile voice to her left.

The Xixon turned, frowning at the interruption.

"Well?"

"The cargo of the 834 contained no Menkalite."

"None!" Her captor whirled back to Helva, his eyes blazing. "Where did you squander it?"

"At Tania Australis," she replied, purposefully keeping her voice low.

"Speak up," he screamed at her.

"I'm using all the power you've allowed me. That amplifier doesn't produce much."

"It's not supposed to," the Xixon said irritably, his eyes restlessly darting around the room. Suddenly there was his finger obscuring all other objects from her vision. "Tell me, which ship is to deliver Menkalite next?"

"I don't know."

"Speak up."

"I feel that I am shouting already."

"You're not. You're whispering."

"Is this better?"

"Well, I can hear you. Now, tell me, which ship is next to deliver Menkalite?"

"I don't know."

"Will you 'don't know' in darkness?" His laugh echoed hollowly in her skull as he plunged her back into nothingness.

She forced herself to count slowly, second speed, so that she had some reference to time.

He did not keep her out very long. She wanted to scream simply to fill her mind with sound, yet she managed to keep her voice very low.

"Isn't it any better?" he demanded, scowling suspiciously. "Took that Foro obscenity off completely."

Helva steeled herself against the compassion she felt. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Foro had already been mindless.

"For speech, it is sufficient," she said, raising her volume just slightly. She could not use that ploy again for it would cost Meri or Tagi or Delia what fragile grip they had on sanity.

"Hmmph. Well, now, see that it does," He disappeared.

Helva heightened her listening volume. She could hear at least 10 different movement patterns beyond her extremely limited vision. From the reverberations of sound, they were in some large but low-ceilinged natural rock cavern. Now, if the main communications panel, part of which was visible to her, was a standard planetary model, if there were not too many chambers beyond this one to diffuse the sound, and if all the madman's personnel were nearby, she might just be able to do something. He wanted her to sing, did he? She waited and she kept calm.

Presently he returned, absently rubbing his shoulder. Helva increased magnification and noticed the traces of the subcutaneous blue. He used Tucanite, then.

A chair was produced from somewhere for him and he settled himself. Another disembodied hand provided a table on which a dish of choice foods was set.

"Sing, my pretty obscenity, sing," the mad Xixon commanded, reaching languorously above his head toward her input leads.

Helva complied. She began in the middle of her range, using the most sensuous songs she could remember, augmenting them subtly in bass reflex but keeping the volume tantalizingly low so that he had to crouch forward to hear her.

It got on his nerves and when he peevishly reached out to snatch all but her leads from the board, she begged him not to deprive her peers of sense.

"Surely, sir, you could not, when all you need do is augment my power just slightly from the main board. Even without their very minute power draw on this amplifier, I could not possibly reticulate a croon, for instance."

He sat up straight, his eyes flashing with anticipation.

"You can reticulate the mating croons?"

"Of course," she replied with mild surprise.

He frowned at her, torn between a desire to hear those renowned exotic songs and a very real concern to limit a shell's ability. He was deep in the thrall of the Tucanite now, his senses eager for further stimulation, and the lure of the reticulated croons was too much for him.

He did, however, call over and consult with a fawning technician, who blinked constantly and had a severe tic in one cheek. Fascinated, Helva magnified until she was able to see each muscle fiber jerk.

She plunged into dark soundlessness and then, suddenly, felt renewed with the sense of real power against her leads.

"You have ample power now, singer," he told her, his expression vicious with anticipation. "Perform or you will regret it. And do not try any shell games on me, for I have had them seal off all the other circuits on this amplifier. Sing, shipless one, sing for your sight and sound."

She waited until his laughter died. Even a Reticulan croon could not be heard ... or be effective ... above the cackling.

She took an easy one, double-voicing it, treble and counter, testing how much power she could get. It would be enough. And the echo of her lilting croon came back, bouncingly, to reassure her that this installation was not large and was set in natural stone caverns. Very good.

She cut in the overtones, gradually adding bass frequencies but subtly so they seemed just part of the Reticulan croon at first. Even with his heightened sensibilities, he wouldn't realize what she was doing. She augmented the inaudible frequencies.

Her croon was of a particularly compelling variation and she heard, under her singing, if one would permit Reticulan croons such a dignified title, the stealthy advance of his slaves and co-workers, lured close by the irresistible siren's sounds.

She gathered herself and then pumped pure sonic hell into the triple note.

It got him first, heightened as he had been by the Tucanite. It got him dead, his brain irretrievably scrambled from the massive dose of sonic fury. It got the others in the cavern, too. She could hear their shrieks of despair over the weird composite sound she had created, as they fainted.

The overload short circuited several panels in the master board, showering the unconscious and the dead with blinding sparks. Helva threw in what breakers she could to keep her own now-reduced circuit open. Even she felt the backlash of that supersonic blast. Her nerve ends tingled, her 'ears' rang and she felt extremely enervated.

"I'll bet I've developed a very acid condition in my nutrients," she told herself with graveyard humor.

The great room was silent except for hoarse breathing and hissing wires.

"Delia? Answer me. It's Helva."

"Who is Helva? I have no access to memory banks."

"Tagi, can you hear me?"

"Yes." A flat, mechanical affirmative.

"Merl, can you hear me?"

"You're loud."

Helva stared straight ahead at the dead body that had tortured them so cruelly. Oh, for a pair of hands!

Revenge on an inert husk was illogical.

Now what do I do? she wondered. At that point, she remembered that she had been about to divorce Teron. And the tight beam had been left open! Parollan wasn't the kind to sit on his hands. WHERE WAS HE?

"There you are, Helva, back at the old stand," the ST-1 Captain said, patting her column paternally.

She scanned to make certain the release plate was locked back into seamless congruity with the rest of the column.

"Your new cadence-syllable release was tuned into the metal and Chief Railly is the only one who knows it," the Captain assured her.

"And the independent audio and visual relays are attached to the spare synapses of my shell?"

"Good idea, that, Helva. May make it a standard procedure."

"But mine are hooked up?"

"Yes, yours are hooked up. Seems like a case of asking for clearance when the ship was blasted off, this precaution after the fact, but ..."

"Have you ever been sense-deprived, Captain?" He shuddered and his eyes darkened. None of the Fleet or Brain-Brawn Ship personnel who penetrated the Xixon's asteroid headquarters would be likely to forget the pitiable condition of the shell-people, the amplified human beings who had once been considered invulnerable.

"Tagi, Merl, and Delia will recover. Delia'11 be back in service in a year or so," the Captain said quietly. Then he sighed, for he, too, couldn't bring himself to name Foro. "You people are needed, you know." He leaned forward so suddenly toward her panel that Helva gasped. "Easy, Helva." And he slid his hand down the column. "Nope. Can't even feel the seam. You're all secure."

He carefully gathered up the delicate instruments of his profession, wrapping them in soft surgi-foam.

"How're the brawns?" she asked idly, as she stretched out along her rewired extensions, shrugging into her ship skin.

"Well, Delia's Rife will pull out of Menkalite addiction. He'd had only the one dose. They've still to track down the other two ships, but I expect all the brawns'll survive." His expression altered abruptly as if he had caught an unpleasant smell. "Why did you have your tight beam channel open, Helva? When we got that brawn of yours out of his padded cell, he was furious that you could disregard proper procedure in such a fashion." The Captain managed to sound like Teron for a moment. "Why, if you hadn't, and Cencom hadn't heard the whole damned thing ... How come you left the channel open?"

"I'd rather not say, but since you've met Teron, you might do a little guessing."

"Huh? Well, whatever the reason, it saved your life."

"It took 'em long enough."

The Captain laughed at her sour complaint. "Don't forget, you'd been cleared, so your kidnappers just lifted off Durrell before your supervisor could stop 'em. But Parollan sure scorched the ears of every operator in frequency range getting Fleet ships after you. At that, with a whole sector to comb, and the drug runners using this asteroid off Borealis as a hideout, too close to Durrell to be even a probability, it took a little time."

"That Xixon thing was smart-mad, hiding right out in sight."

"Well, he had a high intelligence factor," the captain admitted. "After all, he made it into brawn training 20-odd years ago."

That had been an unnerving development, Helva reflected. If he'd actually qualified and then developed neural maladjustments ... He had taken enough Tucanite to break the deconditioning mind blocks, another matter that was going to be reevaluated by Central Worlds as a result of this incident, and had managed to insinuate himself into maintenance crews on Regulus Base, laying the groundwork for his operation by the judicious use of addictive drugs on key employees. Then, using Central World brains ships with drugged brawns under his control, he could have landed anywhere, including Regulus Base.

"I'll be off now," the Captain said, saluting her respectfully. "Let your own brawn take over now."

"Not if I can help it," Helva replied.

Whatever bond of loyalty she had once had for Teron had dissolved as surely as she had been parted from her security. Teron, having decided that he was hopelessly incarcerated, had stolidly composed himself to await the worst with calm dignity ... as any logical man ought to do.

On anyone else's tapes (including the Captain's, to judge by the expression on his face), such logic was cowardice; and that was Helva's unalterable conclusion. Although she would grant that his behavior had certainly been consistent.

Delia's Rife, on the other hand, had tried to break out. He had clawed a foothold in the padded fabric of his cell, lacerating hands and feet in the attempt to reach the ceiling access hatch. Dizzy from a Menkalite injection, confused and weak from starvation intended to allow the Menkalite to work unhindered in his system, he had actually crawled as far as the airlock when the rescue group had arrived.

Helva let the ST-1 down the personnel lift and ran a thorough but hasty flip-check of herself, scanners, sensory meters, power-pile drive chamber, inventory. It was like revisiting a forgotten treasury of minor miracles. Helva wondered if she had ever before appreciated the versatility incorporated in her ship body, had really valued the power she had at her disposition, or cherished the ingenuity of her engineers. Oh, it was good to be back together again.

"Helva?" a low voice spoke tentatively. "Are you alone now?" It was Central Worlds on the tight beam.

"Yes. The ST-1 has just left. You can probably reach him ..."

"Shove him," and then Helva realized that the hoarse voice must belong to Niall Parollan. "I just wanted to know you were back where you belong. You're sure you're all right, Helva?"

Niall Parollan? Laryngitic with concern? Helva was flattered and surprised, considering his uncomplimentary description hurled at her at their last parting.

"I'm intact again if that's what you mean, Parollan," she replied in droll good humor.

She could have sworn she heard a sigh over the tight beam.

"That's my girl," Parollan laughed, so it must have been a wheeze she'd heard. "Of course," and he cleared his throat, "if you hadn't had your synapses scrambled on Beta Corvi, you'd've listened to me when I tried to tell you that that simple simian Acthionite was a regulation-bound brass ..."

"Not brass, Niall," Helva interrupted sharply, "not brass. Brass is a metal and Teron has none."

"Oh ho ho, so you admit I was right about him?"

"To err is human."

"Thank God!"

Just then Teron requested permission to board.

"I'll see you later, Helva. I couldn't stomach ..."

"Don't go, Parollan ..."

"Helva, my own true love, I've been glued to this tight beam for three days for your sake and the stim-tabs have worn off. I'm dead in the seat!"

"Prop your eyelids open for a few moments more, Niall. This'll be official," she told Parollan as she activated the personnel lift for Teron. She felt a cold dislike replace the bantering friendliness she had been enjoying.

Big as life and disgustingly Neanderthal, her brawn strode into the main control room, saluting with scant ceremony toward her bulkhead. Strode? He swaggered, Helva thought angrily, looking not the least bit worse for his absence.

Teron rubbed his hands together, sat himself down in the pilot's chair, flexed his fingers before he poised them, very businesslike, over the computer keyboard.

"I'll just run a thorough checkdown to be sure no damage was done," His words were neither request nor order.

"Just like that, huh?'* Helva asked in a dangerously quiet voice. Teron frowned and swiveled round in the chair toward her panel.

"Our schedule has been interrupted enough with this mishap."

"Mishap?"

"Modulate your tone, Helva. You can't expect to use those tricks on me."

"I can't expect what?"

"Now," he began placatingly, jerking his chin down, "I take into consideration you've been under a strain recently. You should have insisted that I oversee that ST-1 Captain during that installation. You might have sustained some circuit damage, you know."

"How kind of you to consider that possibility," she said. That was it!

"You could scarcely be harmed, physically, contained as you are in pure titanium," he said and swung back to the console.

"Teron of Acthion, all I can say at this point is that it's a damned good thing for you that I am contained behind pure titanium. Because if I were mobile, I would kick you down that shaft so fast ..."

"What has possessed you?"

For once, sheer blank illogical amazement flashed across Teron's face.

"Get out! Get off my deck! Get out of my sight. Get OUT!" Helva roared, pouring on volume with each word, with no regard for the tender structure of the human ear.

With sheer sound she drove him, hands clapped to the sides of his head, off the deck, down the side of the 834 as fast as she could escalate the lift.

"Take me for granted, will you? Unreliable organism, am I? Illogical, irresponsible, and inhuman ..." Helva bellowed after him in a planet-sized shout. And then she burst out laughing, as she realized that such emotional behavior on her part was the only way she could have routed the over-logical Teron of Acthion.

"Did you hear that, Niali Parollan?" she asked in a reasonable but nevertheless exultant tone. "Niall? Hey, Cencom, you on the tight beam ... answer me?"

From the open channel came the shuddering discord of a massive adenoidal snore.

"Niall?" The sleeper wheezed on, oblivious, until Helva chuckled at this additional evidence of human frailty.

She asked and received clearance from the asteroid's half-ruined spaceport. She was going to have a long chat with Chief Railly when she returned.

Her penalty for 'divorcing' Teron would be a speck against the finder's fee for four shanghaied BB ships. And there ought to be a Federation bonus for aid in the apprehension of drug runners. Totaled, if true justice was giving her half a chance, the rewards might just make her a free ship, out of debt, truly her own mistress. The thought was enough to set her singing.

The Partnered Ship

Hurtling through space at speeds no unprotected human could tolerate, Helva contemplated the delightful knowledge that she had paid off her indebtedness to Central Worlds Brain-Brawn Ship Service. She was her own mistress. Free. And free to choose, at long last, a partner, a brawn, a mobile human to companion her wherever she chose to wander. She was no longer limited to those sterling souls, fresh and eager from Academy training, fully indoctrinated in Central Worlds' ethos, conditioned to a set way of thinking and acting, molded according to predetermined physical, intellectual, spiritual, psychological requisites, and not what she had in mind. She could pick anyone now. She could ...

Well, now, come to think of it, she couldn't. Brawns, for all their shortcomings, were not ordinary technicians, cranked out by the thousands from specialists' programs on every planet. They were especially trained and educated to function in an unusual partnership. She could not pick out an agreeable personality and find him deadheading on that charm. Even on short contracts, with an industrial or planetary agency, she'd have to rely to a certain degree on a brawn with sense, integrity, and a certain breadth of education, or she'd get royally rooked, industrially and systematically. And besides, she wanted a permanent partner, not another transient. She wanted companionship, an intelligent, sympathetic friend; not a passive employee. Another factor limited her field further. Many otherwise well-adjusted citizens of a complex, civilized galaxy were revolted or superstitiously terrified at the thought of a human being entombed in a bulkhead, connected to the operational circuitry of a powerful space ship. The neurosis could even extend to personalities like Teron, who deluded themselves that a shell person was really not human, was actually a highly sophisticated computer.

Very few people she had met, Helva admitted sadly, thought of her as Helva, a person, a thinking, feeling, rational, intelligent, eminently human being.

Jennan had. Theoda, except for that one brief instance of rapport, had been too immersed in her lifelong expiation to entertain a personal reaction to Helva, the human. And, although Kira Falernova had been with her over 3 years, neither of them had let the friendship develop into a deep attachment.

In fact, the only mobile human who appeared to regard Helva as Helva was Niall Parollan. And for all Helva knew, he had merely developed an effective way of handling his BB ship subordinates by alternately praising and insulting them in that highly personal, stimulating way.

And yet, he had stayed on the tight beam for 3 days, nursing that tenuous trace of her whereabouts. He could just as easily have delegated the duty to a regular com man. That he hadn't done so absolved him of her previous grievances.

She hoped someone had discovered him asleep at the control panel. He must have been in a deuced uncomfortable position to snore that way. Helva chuckled to herself. Too bad he wasn't bigger. He'd've made a good brawn. And yet, he was passed over, while someone like that nardy idiot, Teron, tall, brawny enough to look at, not only got into training but completed the rigorous course. He must have done it ... as Niall had acidly suggested ... on theory credits. Perhaps Central Worlds had better reevaluate their image requirements as a result of this Borealis fiasco. What heavy-woriders like Parollan lacked in stature, they made up in mass ... and pure cussedness.

"Fardles," Helva said in unaccustomed profanity. The word echoed satisfactorily through the empty cabins. "I wonder if he stayed awake long enough to record my divorce."

She didn't like to contemplate Niall's remarks anent ditching Teron. She could practically hear his rasping voice reminding her that he'd tried to talk her out of Teron.

"For a smart ship, you can be a dumb broad!" Well, it hadn't been a complete disaster. She'd have that to counter Parollan's scorn. In fact, if Teron hadn't been such an irritating dolt, the Xixon creature would never have got into the main cabin; she and Teron wouldn't have been overwhelmed and she wouldn't have made enough in bonuses and rewards to Pay-off so soon.

That was such a comforting thought. To accomplish Pay-off so early on in her career; to reach the goal all BB ships dreamed of. So, now what? She needed a brawn, one of her exceeding careful choice, and she needed another goal, a point, a destination. Maybe one would supply the other. Or vice versa?

"I could go to the Horsehead Nebula," she said aloud for the sound of it.

And the sound triggered a carefully suppressed memory. Jennan leaning against the console, grinning at her, his eyes alight with affection and humor ...

"If they ever take us off the milkruns, we'll make a stab at the Nebula, huh?"

She was off the milkruns, but Jennan lay dead in Regulus Base cemetery, all their wild, happy schemes entombed with him. The challenge of such a flight, unaccompanied, was as empty as her ship self.

Horsehead Nebula, indeed! To divert her trend of thought, she ran a rapid calculation. Oh, she could make it, for all her present material dependence on man. Her pile was fresh, though she wished someone would rattle a few brains and develop an energy source that would utilize the full potential of the f.t.l. principle. It was like having two high gears in a powerful ground car that couldn't be used because they'd burn up all available fuel in a few milliseconds. As it was, she could reach the Horsehead ... in a 100 standard years, at her present top speed.

And then what? You needed someone to celebrate a victory with, to extole a notable achievement, or any triumph was empty. If there was no goad to progress, advance was sterile. You needed a goal, or there was no point to anything.

Now Helva could understand why older class ships suddenly opted out for no discernible reason. And she wondered why Pay-off had seemed so enviable a state. Here she was. And where was she? Shell-people like Amon and Treel, so determined to get here, would never believe that it was the act of paying off that really mattered.

The ship-to-ship band bleeped through her gloomy reflections.

"Helva, this is 422!"

"Silvia!"

"From you I'll accept the name. Rumor is that you've reached Pay-off."

"According to my computations I have!"

"What's the matter with you, then? That's not the end of the world. It's the beginning."

"Of what?"

"Say, that Borealis sense-deprivation hit you hard."

"No, no, really. I'm all right. I just don't like solitude."

"You don't appreciate being well off," Silvia went on in her cynical way. "I'd've thought you'd be glad to be rid of that asinine Teron. He reminded me so much of that half-lobed ... well, never mind him. Helva, you're going to have to watch your step. You've Paid-off in less than 10 standard years. That's too soon. Much too soon for Central Worlds to be willing to let you off their hook."

"I'm not so sure I'm off," Helva replied.

"What do you mean? Listen," and Silvia's voice sounded fierce, "if there's any funny taping on you, you call in the Mutant Monitors or the Society for Preservation of the Rights of Intelligent Minorities. That'd be Amiking and Rocco on Regulus. Amiking's SPRIM, got the fancy uniform, but it's Rocco who has the brains. You get them in on any discussions. Demand a recalculation of all costs from the day they shelled you out of your cradle."

"Silvia, there's not going to be any trouble about the Pay-off figures. I'm clear. I'm sure of it."

"Then what's the problem?"

"What do I do now?"

Silvia spluttered for a moment. "Don't you realize," she demanded angrily, "that industrial complexes, not1 to mention planetary unions, will pay you any figure you name? For any time you'll spare them? Of course, you do have to watch yourself with private industry. They play dirty. Before you touch down at Regulus, you call Broley. A city shell-person always knows who's ready to bid and who you can trust. Particularly Broley. He'll get you a good contract!"

"And a good brawn?"

"Are you on that wheeze again, Helva?" Silvia was disgusted. "Change around. Grab the kind of technician you need for an assignment, then drop him. I'd've thought you'd had quite enough of brawns for a while."

"Quite enough brawns, yes. I just want one who'll stay a while. If only Jennan ..."

"If only ... "If converts no energy and has no credit. You don't seem to realize, Helva, you're a top BB ship. You'll have brawns begging to board you. Take your pick. Sure, you and Jennan made a fine team. His death was a piece of rotten luck. But he is dead. Let him rest in peace. Find yourself another guy, someone up to your calibre. Not another bluntbrained bastard like the one you shouted off your deck."

Helva was startled that Silvia had already heard about that.

"And if you've got to have a partner, grab one young, train him up right. The Academy ruins more than it improves. You ought to know by now what you don't want in a partner. Teach him what he ought to know. Don't wait for the impossible! Engineer it. And look out for Railly's conniving. He's going to try to keep you on the roster or I haven't been around this Service for 400 years."

"Why have you been around for 400 years, Silvia?"

There was such a long silence Helva wondered if they'd gone beyond contact range.

"I don't ask myself that any more, Helva. I used to when I was your age and Pay-off seemed close. Then we ran afoul of a meteor swarm off Saadalsund and ... well, there's usually something interesting to do for Central Worlds. I've had good partners and bad ones, too." Her voice wavered now from attenuation. "Be careful, Helva. Don't sell yourself cheap."

The contact broke then but the comfort of Silvia's astringent concern overshadowed the substance of her warning for a tune.

To reassure herself, Helva ran through the computations again, starting with the fearful debts of her early infancy and childhood. The pituitary adjustments so that her body would not outgrow the final capsule and the delicate brain surgery that made Helva the ship had been, as always, expensive. However, since there could be no 'slaves' or 'indentured' servants within Central Worlds Autonomy, committees and organizations of dedicated citizens decreed that a salary scale, a bonus-and-awards system, should provide incentive and remuneration for shell people in every occupation.

Now Helva could see that the subtle, massive conditioning she'd received in her formative years was double-edged. It made her happy as a shell-person, it had dedicated her to her life in Service, and it made Pay-off a mockery. What else could a BB ship do but continue as she had started ... in Service? The same must apply to shell people trained to manage ships, mining planets or industrial complexes. And yet there was compensation.

The memory of Jennan rose to plague her again, to plague and console. Those had been marvelous years; short but full of a glowing wonder of self-discovery and joint exploration. They'd been eager for the challenge of each new mission to be faced together. They'd taken a perverse pride in her sobriquet. And Jennan had had to defend them both against the ridicule of other brawns until the JH-834 had been admired and respected as the Ship Who Sang. Jennan had been unique. But surely there would be another man with other qualities to recommend him.

She wondered if she had unconsciously chosen Teron because he had been the antithesis of her first brawn. Well, Silvia was right. She ought to find a reasonable compromise, train him up as a proper brawn. Train him up to consider her a person, not a ship or an emotionally responsive computer.

She was Paid-off. She could take time to look around, to let Broley find a reliable, independent contract.

Idly she wondered how long it had taken the FG-602 to contract with the Alpheccan Confederacy. He'd Paid-off, just before her birth. She'd met him once with Jennan, but both he and his partner affected an amused, detached superciliousness that had been offensive.

She could, she supposed, broadcast an advertisement right now. She began to feel better. Action, that was what she'd needed. But perhaps it would be smarter to report in to Regulus Base, make sure all was in order. It was only sensible to keep on good terms with Central Worlds. She'd need their technicians and maintenance sheds for any overhauls.

She found she had slowed somewhat and added thrust, confidently speeding back to Regulus. She began to cast up a list of qualities that she wanted in a partner, and the traits to avoid. So pleasant were her meditations that it seemed no time at all before she had to request landing instructions from Cencom.

"Why, Helva, as I live and breathe," Niall Parollan answered her.

"Catch up on your beauty sleep?"

"Both."

"Both?"

"Caught up with beauty and sleep!"

"She didn't mind your snoring?"

"They were too exhausted to hear and much too grateful to comment, m'gal."

"I am not your gal."

"The endearment is considered an accolade by many."

"How do you arrange that delusion?"

Niall chuckled maliciously. "I pick my partners carefully, not just for the symmetry of their features and the density of their skulls."

"All right, Parollan. You've counted coup. By the way, I trust you stayed awake long enough to register Teron's dismissal?"

"Oh, yes, and took even greater pleasure in posting the penalty to your account."

"I can afford it."

"I know," and there was an unexpected grimness in his voice. "Put your lazy tail down on Pad No. 3, Administrative Landing. An official welcoming committee has been waiting for you."

"You mean, an emancipation delegation."

Cencom was silent.

Well, she'd got off lightly at Parollan's hands. She'd miss him. His caustic manner had been stimulating, and whatever his motives, he had been there at the end of the tight beam. Independence would have its own compensations. Wouldn't it?

As she jockeyed with finicky precision onto the No. 3 pad, she experienced another jolt of uncertainty. Every conscious hour of the last 10 years had been devoted to Central Worlds. She had 'belonged' in that Service and had not been aware of her indebtedness to them. Well, she was just going to have to make some drastic reorientations in her thinking. Change was necessary to growth and maturity.

She was about to send a peremptory signal to Cencom to get a move on when she saw the group emerging from the Base Tower. Niall Parollan was dwarfed by the other three tall men. She recognized the burly figure of Chief Railly, fitting and due her achievement. The other two men she identified as Commander Breslaw of Engineering and Admiral Dobrinon of Xeno Relations. This wasn't a standard graduation line-up. Silvia might be right about Central not letting her off their hook. She ought to have called Double M or SPRIM. Or Broley. She could hardly blast off now. She'd fry the quartet of notables.

So she lowered the passenger lift and cannily turned up her audio units. However, none of the visitors made any comments until they reached the lock. Then they only played the precedence routine.

However, after Niall Parollan had politely ushered the Chief from the lift, he stared at Helva's column with a definitely possessive air. As he stepped into the lock and tossed off the customary salute, it was as if he had proclaimed her his exclusive property.

His audacity staggered her. It wasn't Railly she must guard against. It was this liter-sized, heavyworld machiavelli, Parollan!

Dobrinon noticed the Supervisor's salute.

"Gentlemen, our manners," and, bringing his bootheels smartly together, he accorded her the proper ceremony.

Service had such archaic traditions, Helva mused; like saluting a ship on boarding. Or did they salute her as a ranking officer? Probably not. Salutes between persons had to be reciprocal. She'd train her new brawn to salute. Sentimental about the Service?

"And our profound gratitude, Helva," Chief Railly was saying, holding his own salute an overlong moment "Your superb courage and resourcefulness at Borealis are already Service legends. A triumph of mind over immobility. We're proud, very proud, to have had you on our roster."

Helva caught the past tense and wondered again at Parollan's attitude.

"You know Dobrinon of Xeno and Breslaw of Engineering, of course," the Chief went on, so smoothly passing by the adroit admission that Helva wondered if she had heard aright. And why were these two here if she were, by tacit admission, an independent.

"Yes, we've met," she admitted so drily the Chief chuckled.

He gestured for the others to take seats, his deference of moments before giving way to the next order of business. Helva scanned the delegation warily. Parollan gave her a quick, sideways grin before he settled himself on the couch, one arm draped negligently along the back.

"As if he meant to stay a while," Helva thought sourly.

"I don't know if the directive reached you in transit, Helva," the Chief said, "but those audio-visual modifications you suggested are going to be built into every new shell. Never again will one of our people have to suffer sense-deprivation. Can't imagine why such a contingency wasn't provided for long ago."

Breslaw cleared his throat and pulled at his left ear, managing not to look at anyone as he replied. "Units exist in prematuring shells, Railly, and used to be transferred at final encapsulation of ship-designated personnel until the 4th Class. In that century, modifications to the inner shell made direct linkage to the ship's facilities and seemed to make an auxiliary system redundant."

Railly frowned. "Sometimes these apparent archaic traditions passed along in Service do have their place in our modern context."

"Unfortunately, the shell people kidnapped by Xixon were all of later classes."

"Yes, indeed, that was unfortunate, Breslaw. In your case, Helva," the Chief went on briskly, "there will be no charge for the modification. That puts you right close to Pay-off ..." he held up his hand, smiling benignly as Helva started to interrupt, "probably over and to spare. I think there's no question that you'll get full finders' fee and the reward for the apprehension of federal offenders. That comes in from Central Bureau of the Federation." Railly had taken to pacing the length of the cabin. Helva couldn't decide if he had a guilty conscience, or was gathering mental take-off speed. In either case it augured ill for her.

"Therefore, Helva, Regulus Base must consider you a free agent," he announced in stentorous tones, smiling again to contradict apparent reluctance. "We're proud of your record, Helva. Very proud." He dropped his voice to a confidential aside. "All spacedrek to the contrary, we wish all the BB ships could perform at such efficiency and remove themselves from our fiscal autonomy. Be quite an achievement to run the Service in the black. However, pending the confirmation of those rewards, Regulus Base is required to consider you unavailable for a new assignment of any duration."

"And you had one in mind for me."

"Yes, we did have one in mind," Railly admitted with twinkling eyes and the paternal smile. He glanced expectantly toward Parollan.

"Rather pointless to waste your valuable time, Chief, discussing it then, isn't it?" Helva asked just as Parollan got to his feet.

"Why, I don't think the Chief would ever consider you a waste of his time, Helva," Parollan said, his eyes mocking, challenging her. "Of course, if you've made other plans on the way back from Borealis, it was real courteous of you to check in here and say goodbye." He turned on his heel and started purposefully for the lock. "Drop in again sometime."

"Just a minute, Parollan," Railly said.

The Chief managed to control his expression but Breslaw looked close to panic and Dobrinon's smile had frozen in alarm. Whatever they had had in mind for her must be mighty big. She didn't trust any ploy of Parollan's but these other two were keen, solid, honorable specialists. It wouldn't hurt to listen.

Parollan got to the lock, turned to give her a hearty wave.

"Parollan!"

He halted, hand on the left rail, his face expressing only polite attention. He wasn't giving anything away.

"What had you cooked up, Parollan?"

"I? I'd cooked up nothing."

Helva ignored Dobrinon's startled exclamation.

"We had," Parollan admitted after a glance at the Chief, "discussed another assignment for the TH-834 after that spectacular drug-run. Naturally that mission has been aborted due to circumstances beyond our control."

Helva chuckled to herself. He hadn't let her off lightly on the matter of Teron after all. He'd needle her for the next 25 years for that mistake ...

"As a matter of purely academic interest, until those rewards are posted to me, would you deign to discuss this aborted mission?"

"No harm in discussing it, certainly," he agreed as he sauntered back into the cabin, "while we wait for confirmation from Federation." He settled his wiry body into a comfortable position before he continued. "It had originally been planned to assign the TH-834 to the projected Beta Corvi mission."

"Beta Corvi?" Helva suppressed the flicker of alarm. Then she laughed out loud. "Teron of Acthion in a Corviki shell, coping with the environment?"

Niall regarded her sardonically for a moment. "You yourself made the point that Ansra Colmer, a true egocentric, singleminded, stubborn, and pragmatic as hell, suffered the least personality trauma from the phenomena of the Corviki transfer. Teron was so well endowed with the same sterling attributes that it was obvious he'd ..."

"Not last a minute as a personality on Beta Corvi, and you know it, Niall Parollan. That man was incapable of coping with such anomalies." Parollan's tactics infuriated her. Why, what he had suggested was nothing short of bald murder. And he'd talked Railly into the scheme? Had they both wanted to get rid of Teron?

"Now, really, Helva," Railly said, stepping forward as if separating two antagonists, "I was never in favor of Teron as your brawn, if you'll forgive the reminder ..."

"You were right, Chief," Helva said in so sweet and contrite a tone that Parollan snorted his disgust.

"And sorry to be, I assure you. However, no harm appears to have resulted."

"Except that Helva's now a free agent," Parollan said in a completely expressionless voice.

"Exactly," Railly continued with unexpected enthusiasm. "And, unless Helva has other plans in mind, perhaps we all can make her see the advantage of undertaking this new mission in spite of her changed status."

There was an odd half-smile on Parollan's face as he returned his Chiefs intense stare.

"Yes, perhaps we can," the Supervisor said with a hearty lack of enthusiasm.

Helva saw Dobrinon give him a quizzical look and Breslaw was plainly startled. Something was going amiss with their sales pitch?

"Well then, Helva," Railly started off determinedly, "have you any plans in mind?"

"She's had no tune to advertise," Niall said abruptly. "She made no planetary calls on the return trip here. And I doubt that even the most assiduous of our known informers has had time to discover that the XH-834 has Paid-off. It so rarely occurs this early in service."

"I'll answer for myself, thank you, Parollan."

The others were staring at their colleague with blank astonishment. The atmosphere in the cabin had become strained. Helva was at a loss to figure out why Parollan was deliberately disrupting the mood Railly was attempting to create. Trust him to have an ulterior motive, but what?

"So my enterprising supervisor planned to have me go back to Beta Corvi? That somewhat explains Admiral Dobrinon's presence. And you, Commander Breslaw? Or is Engineering bidding against Xeno for my services?"

"We were hoping to combine forces, Helva," Dobrinon answered after an uncomfortable pause.

Someone has missed his cue, Helva thought.

"It seemed appropriate," Breslaw said, breaking his silence, "that you should be the first ship to benefit from the discoveries resulting from the Beta Corvi data you brought back."

If Engineering had used the stabilizing key for unstable isotopes ...

"Just how would I have benefited?" Helva asked casually. She kept one eye on Parollan. He was adept at titillation. She wouldn't put it past him to have staged this whole thing, including his own apparent disinterest, to arouse her to indiscretion. Of course, she'd want an unproved f.t.1. drive!

"When we began to study the basic theories," Breslaw was saying, "we could see an immediate application to our present f.t.l. system. You're surely aware, Helva, that the potential of the f.t.l. principle is vastly beyond present performance. The problem has been an energy source that could tolerate the demands full f.t.l. speed requires. The Corviki data makes intergalactic travel possible in this decade. This year!"

Intergalactic travel? Helva's excitement matched Breslaw's, Between which galaxies? This one and ... the Horsehead Nebula?

"Yes, intergalactic distances traversed in a fraction of present estimates," Railly said, as if he sensed they had her attention. "Imagine it, Helva, unlimited power, literally inexhaustible power, to take you to the edge of the galaxies visible from the rim of the Milky Way. Beyond any space now known to man." Railly spoke urgently, firing her desire. "Power to make those f.t.l. drive components work efficiently for the first time since they were designed. All we've lacked has been a constant fuel source to stand up to the drain of energy required. And you've the chance to explore unknown space. You can chart new star systems, open up whole galaxies for Central Worlds."

That reminder brought her out of those stars.

"Interesting. Very interesting. The f.t.I. always has been a case of having a good cart and no draft animals strong enough. However, if this radical new development stemmed from the Corviki data, why is another mission necessary?"

Railly gestured to Breslaw, who began whipping out cube-graphs and computer tapes, which he arranged nervously on her console.

"With the Corviki data for stabilizing unstable isotopes, we were able to make use of that form of waste energy, not just for the fractional seconds of half-life before the AMUs deteriorated, but for as long as that power was needed. Imagine it, Helva," said Breslaw's eyes, glowing with wonder, "the power of an exploding star, always equal to that of the exploding star at its highest energy level."

The cabin seemed to darken at his words. It was an exploding star, operating at its highest energy level, Ravel's sun, that had burned Jennan to death as she had frantically tried to outrun its fantastic energy. But to have such a power ... enslaved to her requirements?

She had to have it. An inner nova to expiate the crime of the outer. Hammurabian justice at its purest! She forced herself to listen to Breslaw's explanations.

"Admittedly, Helva, there are tremendous subtleties involved which, I readily confess, no one in my team is scientifically sophisticated enough to appreciate. It's almost as if the Corvi were discussing personal intimacies rather than sub-particular facts, but the result is a fantastic discipline of nucleonic forces.

"As you'll notice, Helva," and he pointed to the first cube and tapped the equations into the ship's computer, "the isotopes are permitted to radiate energy in cycles, but instead of a decrease in the energy available as deterioration occurs, the energy level remains constant. By varying the number of cycles initiated per second, or millisecond for that matter," and Breslaw beamed with paternal fondness for the abilities of his development, "the f.tl. drive receives the power it requires to exceed the speed of light by any multiple required. To traverse a given distance, in a given length of time, the original f.t.l. equations supply the rate of cycle variation needed!"

With an unexpectedly dramatic flourish for such a pragmatic man, Breslaw tapped out a set of voyage requirements.

"If you have to get to, say, Mirfak, in 2 standard days, you can, now. Instead of taking ... oh, how long?"

"Four weeks." Helva supplied the answer absently, more intent on following the print-in of the profoundly interesting equations.

"Four weeks then. Well, you can see the advantages."

And then Helva understood what necessitated the new mission to Beta Corvi.

"One would scarcely try to release that kind of energy within a solar system without knowing the subjective and objective effects. What disadvantages have you observed?" she asked. "Are these computations based on experiment, or sheer theory?"

Doubt and concern dampened Breslaw's ardor. "We have tested the CV energy source, Cycle Variant. We took every possible precaution, used a very slow cyclage rate. It was impossible," he said, grimacing, "to keep the experimental vessel in range of the testing instrumentation ..."

"The vehicle was manned, or BB?"

"Manned." Breslaw's answer was just audible.

"The effect of such acceleration on the personnel was fatal?"

"Not that we know of." Breslaw glanced sharply at Railly, who had been talking in a low voice to Parollan. Before Helva could turn up her audio, the two separated, Railly joining Dobrinon on the couch, leaving Paroilan alone, opposite them. Niall's face was inscrutably polite, his eyes guarded.

"Well, why don't you know?"

"The vessel has not returned. The estimated time of arrival is 9 years standard. It has been sighted returning on normal drive. Their last intercepted communication indicated we must proceed with immense caution in the use of this power source."

"Evidently. I'd also hazard a heavy hand was on the CV switch to get that far out of com range. You should have used a BB ship with no fragile brawns to clutter up the test run."

"There was also a suggestion that we may have misused the Beta Corvi data," Breslaw went on, nodding thoughtfully at her observation. "You can easily extrapolate the destructive potential of the CV factor. We must be sure we have not perverted the data and unleashed uncontrollable or unstable emissions that might have cosmic repercussions." Breslaw looked toward her, worried and hopeful.

That could be some pile to put rods in, Helva mused, although she hoped they wouldn't have to damp that reactor. Intergalactic travel! The test ship flung 9 years away from known space!

"First, I am gratified by the confidence you have in me, gentlemen," she said after a long moment. "However, I cannot help wondering if you selected me because, being Paid-off, in theory, that is, I am therefore most expendable, constituting no embarrassing debit loss on the fiscal records."

Only Parollan appreciated her levity and he laughed with uninhibited delight.

"Your facetious attitude is ill-timed, Helva," Railly remonstrated. "You are the least expendable of our ship personnel. I fail to see, Paroilan, the humor in such an outrageous suggestion." There was no mistaking the anger behind his reprimand.

"In that case," Helva said, "you're a low species of extortionist."

"What?" Railly bellowed, diverted from Niall.

"You know perfectly well, Chief Railly, that I'd want to possess such a drive once I knew of its existence. I'd certainly want to remain in Central Worlds Service to get it!"

Paroilan sobered instantly, staring at her.

"That's the game, isn't it?" Helva demanded, her voice cold because she was talking to Parollan and he knew it now. He kept staring at her, the muscles in his jaw twitching.

"Frankly, yes," Railly answered when it was obvious Parollan would not. "And there's not much time for you to decide."

"How so?"

Some subtle change in Railly's face roused her to a bitter anger. So this was how Central Worlds treated their BB ships. She should have called in Double M and SPRIM. She should have got in touch with Broley. Let Central Worlds fight its own fires.

"Central Worlds is bound by Federation directives, Helva, directives controlled and promulgated by the peoples of the civilized galaxy. There is no latitude on some of those strictures. You are under your original obligation to Central Worlds until those additional bonuses come through from Federation. After that, an entirely different set of directives controls the kind of authority, the type of contract, the wording and restrictions of the clauses, the payments and prerogatives of any further dealings we have with a BB ship. If we operated any other way, Helva," Railly went on implacably, "we would have the humanities' guardians scanning our tapes, sitting on our shoulders, hindering our operations. You have proved to be an extremely capable contractee. The Service needs you. Our need has, so far, been to your benefit. You have been given extraordinary opportunities to achieve Pay-off early in your career. We felt you might consider that at this time, when we are offering you the chance to be the first BB ship with a fully realized f.t.l. drive."

"If apologies are in order, kindly accept them. I did not realize that contract terms changed after Payoff was achieved. However, you can scarcely blame me for wanting to understand all the factors involved in what was only to be a discussion, pending confirmation of those rewards.

"Inherent in Commander Breslaw's explanation is the possibility that I could blow myself into a nova ..."

"I protest," Breslaw jumped to his feet. "You can see that the theory is valid! It has been tested ..."

"And scared you into taking the precaution of checking against perversion of data. I like my skin, gentlemen. I prefer it in one piece."

"Your shell is solid titanium," Breslaw said heatedly, "impervious to ..."

"The full power of an exploding sun in my guts?" Helva snapped. "I've already suffered from the heat of a nova, Breslaw. And this solid titanium shell of mine has proved to be no sanctuary against injury ... and the perversions of man."

Breslaw sank to the couch, utterly deflated. Of the others, only Parollan suffered neither embarrassment nor chagrin. He had jerked his head toward her column, at her rebuttal. His lips were set in too bitter a line even for the cynical supervisor. For a moment, his eyes were unguarded, reflecting a physical pain and an expression Helva had seen once before, in the eyes of a dying man.

It was he who broke the silence, speaking in a heavy, tried voice.

"There's been no attempt to mask the danger involved, Helva. And we've tried to make an unwieldly forest of restrictions work for you. It would be more advantageous for you to extend the original contract than to enter a completely new one. You can check your files on that if you doubt me. We can amend some of the old clauses. We cannot change any of the new. Now have the courtesy to hear us out and then a simple yes or no is all that's required."

He sounded indifferent to that decision now, and she couldn't understand why.

Dobrinon cleared his throat and walked slowly toward her column as if gathering his disrupted thoughts.

"The projected mission to Beta Corvi had multiple purposes, Helva, every one needing abilities, talents, and background that pointed inexorably to you. I'll explain those that relate to my sphere of activity.

"I believe we could condition future observers to withstand the psychological disorientation of Corviki transfers, if we had some idea of the change taking place in the human psyche that has been retained in the Corviki entity. Yes, this is asking for a double portion of your soul's flesh, Helva, but I have an altruistic reason for asking you to return there. Parollan and I are both positive that if you could return and reassure yourself as to the integration ... or disintegration, of the personalities of Solar Prane, Kurla Ster, Chadress and Ansra Cohner in their Corviki environment, you might be able to resolve the sense of guilt and failure that resulted from the outcome of the first mission.

"You are the best qualified, if not the only person capable of recognizing the immigrants." Dobrinon gave a faint smile at his description. It was apt, Helva thought, trying not to admit how the notion of a return scared, and tempted, her. "Now, Davo Fillanaser has volunteered to return. But, frankly, his psyche profile indicates a deep trauma. I suspect that he would ... ah, immigrate, too."

"Very unsettling, I assure you," Helva said. She didn't like the mental picture of Davo Fillanaser's body stretched out, uninhabited, on a couch. But, if Prane and Kurla and Chadress were content as Corviki ... Helva forced her mind away. "Well, it's obvious we are going to need Corviki help if we are to play with their toys without damaging the entire galaxy. I assume my psyche profile was run through and you feel you can trust me to return?"

"Yes." Dobrinon's answer was prompt and firm.

"Even after the Borealis sense deprivation?"

"I'd hazard the guess that the Corviki experience helped you during that episode."

"Shrewd of you, Dobrinon. We are all, are we not, the sum of our experiences. Which brings me to a sordid subject. I assume, Commander Breslaw, that the CV factor will be installed in my drive chambers before I undertake a return to Beta Corvi?"

"Yes, that would be a necessity. How else could they assess our application of their data?"

"And the cost of such an installation?"

Breslaw glanced nervously at Railly. The Chief inclined his head. "We can't determine the exact cost. The experimental vessel was rebuilt several times. Shielding is reinforced, structural members doubled, a new alloy on the hull. Well, I'd estimate in the neighborhood of 500,000 galactic credits."

He had the grace to look appalled, Helva noticed, although the staggering cost left her relatively unmoved. After all, she'd paid off more than that already.

"That would be if I contracted immediately?"

"Yes."

"And about twice that if the old contract lapsed?"

"I expect so." Breslaw closed his folders disconsolately as if he had now abandoned all hope of this project. This kind of pessimism irritated Helva immeasurably.

"However, Helva, if you extend the old contract, we are in a position to flex any conditions that bind a person of your proved abilities," Railly said smoothly.

"Don't pressure me, Railly. I haven't considered all the angles from my point of view."

That was not true. She had made up her mind. She'd make Railly flex those conditions that bound a person of her proved ability until SPRIM and Double M could hear regulations cracking.

Parollan had certainly cooked up a real tight orbit for her. And she'd bet her next bonus that he knew exactly what an effect Breslaw's description of that power source would have on her. He didn't miss a trick, that one. He'd've seen the justice of enslaving a nova to her bidding after what Ravel's sun had done to Jennan, And he certainly had pointed out that guilt resolution gimmick to Dobrinon. Well, she'd show this egotistical, self-assured, domineering, machiavellian refugee from a heavy-world ... Helva brought her polemic to an abrupt halt. And stared down at Parollan.

His face was drawn into dark lines of strain and exhaustion. There was no trace in the slumped shoulders of the arrogant manipulator who called her bluff by being ready to walk out before he'd even started. There was no malicious gleam in the back of the unguarded eyes apathetically turned on her column. He must know he'd won! And, sure of her interest, was he regretting his machinations? He certainly looked as if he regretted something from somewhere in his ill-starred past.

Fine time to feel sorry for Niall Parollan! She must keep firmly in mind that they wanted her very badly indeed, for some pretty substantial reasons, and they were going to have to pay for her.

"I assume that the probability curve is high in my favor?" she broke the silence to ask.

Railly nodded.

"As I mentioned," Dobrinon said quickly, "you are the most likely person to identify the immigrants if there is any trace of their previous personality in the Corviki entities."

"You don't think there will be?"

Dobrinon shrugged. "How can one gauge the depth of transfer with totally alien structure and psychology? As a human, I prefer to think some vestige of the humanoid remains. I recommend, however, that your initial contact be extremely brief. That is," he amended discreetly, "if you decide to undertake this mission. Under no circumstances would you be asked to jeopardize yourself in the search for others."

"The primary goal of the mission is to obtain the Corviki evaluation of the CV data," Breslaw spoke up. He glanced anxiously at Dobrinon, who shrugged his acquiescence to the priority.

Oh, she had them now.

"I should very much like to have that drive if it's feasible," Helva said. Why on earth should Parollan flinch? Were they hiding something after all?

"My personal faith in you has been vindicated," Railly declared, his usual jovial self.

"But you're going to have to agree to a few stipulations of mine or there is no point in proceeding further."

"You've never been unreasonable, Helva, and I do have authority to stretch a few regulations in your favor."

"You'd better listen to my conditions before you make any promises, Railly," Helva said drily. "I'm not about to mortgage my soul for 25 years or so, paying off 500,000 credits, on the supposition that the CV drive will be vetted by the Corviki and that I'll resolve a few dangling traumas in the process.

"This extension of my old contract will be void if the CV drive is not feasible. You can junk the modifications to my hull, I'll pay for the cost of the alloy coating, and you'll just have to write the rest off as experimental loss. That's what it'll be."

There was a hurried conference between Railly and Breslaw, with Railly reluctantly giving in to the engineer's persuasions.

"All right."

"Second, I can use my own judgment on the advisability of contacting the human immigrants on Corvi, with no penalty for not completing all phases of the planned mission."

"I think Dobrinon made that contingency clear."

"Third, the matter of a brawn partner ..."

"You have certainly proved that you can operate better without a brawn," Railly interrupted her, all cooperation. Parollan made an inarticulate sound in his throat. "You had something to say, Supervisor?"

"May I finish?" Helva demanded acidly. "Parollan, at least, is well aware of my continuous demands for a permanent brawn. I do not like to operate alone. I detest it."

"It would be most inadvisable," Dobrinon put in anxiously.

"I will not undertake this mission at all without the brawn of my choice!" she said, raising her voice above the others.

"I heartily concur, Railly. This Corviki psyche exchange has tremendous emotional kickback. Parollan and I feel strongly ..." but when Dobrinon glanced toward the Supervisor for confirmation, he got no response at all and hurriedly continued, "that it is imperative for Helva to be sustained by a strong, empathic brawn as a buffer to the trauma of the experience."

"The whole discussion can be terminated right now, Railly, if my conditions are not met. They are, as your experts agree, reasonable,"

Railly acquiesced, but his smile had disappeared.

"Good. My final condition also hinges on the success of the drive. You have set me 500,000 credits to pay off. Acceptable. However, with the CV utilizing the full potential of the f.t.l. drive, I will be able to get from here to there in next to no time at all. I'd be working my tail off for you. I hardly think the old scale of salary and bonuses would apply to the new level of mobility."

Railly began to protest, volubly, mentioning the possibility that Breslaw's estimate of 500,000 was conservative, but he was willing to accept that fee.

"Pure extortion," she interrupted him. "For that matter, am I expected to absorb the cost of any expensive adjustments that the Corviki might recommend? I've got to consider that, too, as well as service to a completely new power source. No, Railly, I'm sure that Double M and SPRIM might very well consider that the old rate of pay will need some adjustment upward to compensate for my increased efficiency."

"She'll be the fastest thing in the galaxy," Breslaw said.

"Whose side are you on, Breslaw?"

"In this case, Helva's," the engineer replied, unintimidated.

"I'm only asking a reasonable one-third increase. Surely not excessive for such a loyal employee of Central Worlds. I'm sure you'll contrive to get your money's worth out of me, if I know how you operate?"

"How I operate?" Railly swung around to glare pointedly at Parollan.

"Parollan operates his section under your orders, Chief," Helva said, "and the dictates of expediency."

She was sorry she said it the moment the words were out. Parollan's withdrawal was obvious to the others now. He, not the Chief, had initiated this project. He had neatly layered the odds against her refusing it. She couldn't imagine what was wrong with him now. He had simply dropped out of the arguments, ignored the discussions, was totally immersed in that private struggle.

She was sorry for him. She hated him. She needed him. And she was about to get him. She couldn't beat him but she could join him.

"Do you agree to my conditions, Railly, or don't you? Take 'em or leave 'em."

Dobrinon and Breslaw added their entreaties and Helva didn't really need to hear Railly's growl of consent to know that he'd had no real alternative either.

She'd say this for Railly, he was a good loser. For a long moment after he called the revisions in to the Base computer and made them official, he stood with his head down, staring at the pilot's console. When he turned back, his face was impassive.

"I was warned you might drive a stiff bargain, Helva." He flicked a glance at Parollan. "I didn't think a BB ship would ever outguess me. But you're goddamned right," he added, his eyes flashing, "when you say that I'll work your tail off while you're still a Central Worlds ship."

"Fair enough."

"Now, Breslaw's going to want you at the maintenance docks to lay in the CV drive. You'll retain all standard equipment until the Beta Corvi vet the new drive. And yes, that's included in the 500,000. Dobrinon has a stack of results on his analysis of the Beta Corvi trauma for you to print into your banks."

"It's as much Niall's work as mine," Dobrinon said, again trying to draw the silent man into the discussion. "He had several astute correlations to make from the debriefing and psych tapes of the others on that mission that have helped my staff formulate such preliminary conclusions as we've been able to make."

"Yes, yes, Parollan's very helpful," Railly muttered. "So there's just the proper brawn left to be discussed. Right now ..."

"Hold it," Helva interrupted him. "I thought I made it clear that I will only undertake the Beta Corvi run with the partner of my choice. Whether that man continues after Beta Corvi is not at issue."

Railly turned to her, his eyes wary. "Yes, we'd agreed to that. But you also said you wanted a permanent brawn,"

"I do. But I won't go to Beta Corvi unless Parollan goes with me."

She ignored Railly's explosive protest and the astonished exclamations and congratulations from Dobrinon and Breslaw. Her eyes, her mind, her being were focused on Niall.

The wiry little man turned, his eyes seeking the exact spot on the column parallel to her head.

"This is a bad time for jokes, Helva."

"I'm not joking, m'boy."

"By all that's holy, Parollan, Helva's a genius," Dobrinon cried delightedly, clapping the unresisting shoulder. "And she's called your bluff."

"Indeed she has. You've always boasted you could outbrawn any man in the Service," Railly said in a dry, cool voice. There'd been no vindictiveness in Helva's nomination, but there was in Railly's prompt ratification. "A little field work will make you a better supervisor."

"I think Helva can rectify that fluctuating gravity problem that bugged the test ship," Breslaw assured Parollan. "And there's always the shockweb for added protection."

Abruptly they left. Niall Parollan remained, troubled and dazed, reacting not at all in any of the ways she could understand.

"You've got to be joking, Helva," he said, his voice cracking despite an obvious effort to control himself.

"Why? You know more about brawning than anyone in Service. You know the Corviki problem backward and forward, and you undoubtedly researched Breslaw's equations thoroughly before ..."

"Of course I did," and the control was gone. His words tumbled out harsh and bitter. "Do you think I'd let you walk into something I hadn't checked thoroughly? But I rigged this farce. I did! Not Railly. I talked him into it. And Breslaw and Dobrinon, too, once I saw the possibility of hooking you."

"That was obvious!"

"You didn't have a chance, Helva, because I knew every button to push on you and when. And I did, gods help me, I did!"

"You are undoubtedly the most unscrupulous supervisor in the Service," she agreed, countering his scathing self-contempt with unruffled humor. "And that was a fardling underhanded trick you just served me."

"You're not even listening to me, you stupid tinplated witch. Can't you understand what I did to you? I made you stay in the Service!"

"No. I elected to stay. On my conditions."

Niall stared wildly at her, his eyes dark with the conflict that was tearing him apart. All arrogance, all self-confidence had been stripped from him. This was too violent a reaction to finding himself momentarily outmaneuvered.

"Your conditions? Your conditions! Now there's another real fine example of cosmic justice," and he laughed hoarsely at an irony only he could see.

"Maybe you'd better let me in on that joke, Niall. I could use a laugh, even if it's on me."

There were tears in his eyes now and he held his clenched fists rigid against his thighs.

"I rigged all this, Helva, because I, Niall Parollan, could not let you leave Central Worlds Service. Oh, yes. I put every mission your way that would help you Pay-off. And when you actually had, I found I couldn't tolerate the prospect. So I set up all those clever nardy ploys to keep you in. Only when I saw you reacting just as I'd planned you should, I knew I'd used my position for the most despicable act in a long series of clever, shrewd, despicable manipulations. And I couldn't stop what I'd started. I couldn't even think of a way to get you out of the mess. Then you, Helva, want me, Parollan, for your brawn." His laugh was a cry of anguish.

"That doesn't change my option, Parollan," she said forcefully. She had to override that horrible laughing. "I want you for brawn as selfishly as you want me in Service. And it'll be safer to have you my brawn than my Supervisor. There isn't much else for me to do anyway but stay with Central Worlds," she added in a gentler voice. "You did make it possible for me to stay on my terms, because they fardling well know that I'm the only ship to do this job. I want you as brawn, Niall Parollan, because you are clever, devious, despicable, unscrupulous, and demanding. Because you do know the right buttons to push on me. You're not much on looks and size, but I've been that road. I'll trust you to bring me back out of anything ... even Beta Corvi."

"Trust me?" It was a scream starting from his guts. His body was shaking with effort. "Why, you fool, you freak-out, half-grown, wirehaired retard of a romantic, tin-assed fool. You trust me? Don't you realize that I know every single thing there is to know about you. I even had a chromosomal extrapolation made so I'd know what you look like. And I know the release syllables they coded into your panel not seven days ago! Trust me? I'm the last person you can trust. Choose me as brawn? God!"

Helva was staggered by his disclosure. Parollan had a brawn fixation on her? She wanted to sing hallelujahs, she wanted to scream with rage. She was exalted and full of panic. But she knew what to do. She'd better. A brawn's irrational desire to see the face of his 'brain' partner was scarcely uncommon when there was a deep emotional attachment between partners. It was usually thwarted by the difficulty of removing the access panel. If Niall had those guarded syllables ...

She had to deal with this fixation, one way or the other.

"That's why I can't be your brawn, Helva," Niall said in a broken voice. "And don't give me that assywarble about fixations are common and cured. I know the release syllables. And one day, it'd be too much for Niall boy. I'd have to open that coffin they've sealed you in. I'd have to look at your beautiful face, touch that god-lovely smile, and hold you ..."

He'd moved, fighting the drive of his body every inch, until he was eaglespread against her column, his cheek pressed against the cold metal, his fingertips white with the effort to penetrate the unyielding surface. One hand slid slowly toward the access panel. Yet his face was oddly clear, serene, almost happy, his eyes closed as if he already held her against him.

"Then say the syllables," she cried passionately. "Open the panel, breach the shell, stare at my face and hold my twisted body. It would be better for me to die at your hands than remain an inviolate virgin without you!"

With an inarticulate cry, he jumped back as if the metal had burned him. His face was contorted in a terrible grimace.

"If you didn't then, Niall, you never will," she said, keeping her voice gentle and soothing, suppressing the unexpected longing that threatened to rob her of sanity.

"God, Helva. No!"

He whirled, running to the lock, jamming down the controls on the lift. He jumped from it before it reached ground level, and disappeared into the Tower.

And I can only wait, Helva thought bitterly. He's got to make this decision himself. He's got to want to come back because he's sure he can trust himself. My implicit trust in him is irrelevant. He must be the initiator, the manipulator, the schemer.

Why didn't I slam the lock shut? Why didn't I keep him here until he realized that he's all right now, that the critical moment had come and gone? All his defenses had been down: he'll never be that vulnerable again, either to himself or me. He's got to see that when he gets himself under control.

Surely he'll be back soon, all arrogance, jaunty, swaggering with self-assurance. If the fixation is so deep, he'll have to come back. He couldn't stay away. Only a Niall Parollan could ... if one Niall Parollan decided that was what he had to do. He's that kind of man. He can rationalize away all the deceitful, collusive, unprincipled things he does, dismiss them from his mind once they'd accomplished their purpose. But set him up against pressure on his deepest integrity, touch him in the core of reluctant goodness and honesty, and Niall Parollan could make the noble gesture, the uncharacteristic sacrificial act. And foul them both up for the rest of their lives!

Should she call Railly? He'd act instanter. On what? Niall had gone into the Tower. To think, consider, decide; she sincerely hoped, to come back. After what they'd put Railly through, she'd better not roil him unnecessarily. Particularly against Niall.

And Helva was stuck again, waiting, with her lock wide open and the lift ground level, immobilized.

He'd said she was beautiful. When had he had an extrapolation made from her chromosome pattern? It cost a fortune to make even a solido. Before Beta Corvi? Or at Borealis? Oh, gods, had he got hold of her medical records? No, that would have revolted a man with Niall's predilection for the nubile. She felt like giggling; wasn't she nubile, and young? Of course, the easy knowing way in which he inferred startling sexual prowess might be delusive. No, small men were often compensated for their lack of stature by another more generous endowment. And the appetite to fit. But her face was beautiful, he'd said. Even if it was only by way of an artificial extrapolation, it pleased her. He was unlikely to use that adjective lightly. She would have to be beautiful for him to say she was.

The concept of being beautiful was both reassuring and disturbing. Shell-people were conditioned not to think of their personal appearance, never saw any repros of themselves. These, too, were high security secrets. Evidently nothing was secret or sacred to the determined. Niall had managed to get the new release syllables, supposedly known only to Chief Railly and hypno-Iocked in to that mind as an added precaution.

She was beautiful. Niall had said so. Where was he?

'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, But not for love.'

She giggled unexpectedly at the ridiculous line that floated into her mind. Men had dared more for beauty, however, particularly beauty unattainable, than for any other single motivation.

For legendary Helen's beauty had Troy fallen. For the beauty of gold and gems others had risked life, superstition, and freedom. For the beauty of knowledge men had strained and died. For the beauty of a principle a host of fanatics of every moral persuasion had perished.

She didn't want Niall dying for her, beautiful or not. She wanted him at the pilot's console!

A channel opened.

"Yes?"

"What a charming welcome," a familiar voice replied.

It was not Niall's and her surge of relief died.

"Who is it?"

"What an insulting change, my dear."

"Oh, hello, Broley. I was ... expecting another call. But I'm always glad to hear from you." It was impolitic to antagonize a city shell-person, particularly when it was Broley, and especially right now. She might need his help.

"You sounded so glad! And I sincerely trust that your anticipated caller is not a rival."

"Rival?"

"Yes, yes," and a touch of asperity crept into Broley's voice. Helva brought herself up sharp. Broley wouldn't be so affable unless he wanted something. "I understand," and his voice was suave again, "that you've reached Pay-off."

"Trust you to find that out."

"Ah, then, you haven't made any commitments yet?"

"Sorry, Broley. I extended my Central Worlds contract."

"You extended? With Central Worlds?" Broley's voice was an appalled whisper. "And I always thought you were a keen one. For the love of printed circuits, why did you have to do such an irrational, acid-headed, sour-phased, debasing thing like that? Don't you realize that I have four industrials and two planets lined up ready to bid themselves out of a decade of profits to get a 6 month contract with a BB ship like you? Whatever possessed you to do it? I'm stunned! I'd better check my own acid-level. You've put me off with your folly. I'm speechless!"

Somehow Broley's exacerbations revived her. The grasping, greedy, gossiping, cynical city shell person reinforced her previous decision. There probably were six bidders waiting to cut each other's financial throats for her, but she was certain that she wouldn't enjoy working their contracts, whatever they were. There'd be all the unpleasantness with the losers. Despite every shortcoming, Central Worlds at least worked for the good of the total Federation, not for the aggrandizement of one isolated star system, or a mercenary monoply.

"Broley? Speechless?" Helva asked with a creditable laugh. "You don't sound it."

"Parollan conned you, didn't he?" Broley countered quickly.

Helva could almost see his mind correlating bits and pieces of eavesdropped comments and private assumptions to reach that conclusion. But how much had he guessed? How much was actual knowledge? She knew Broley prided himself on anticipating events. It made him an extraordinarily capable city manager. The sprawling Regulus metropolis, immense, complicated, catering to a dozen sub-races as well as the huge humanoid population, operated smoothly without transportation slowdowns, work crises or material shortages, all under Broley's supervision. But he always had a circuit open for trouble and rumor. He loved trouble, and said it kept him young; but he relished rumor and was not above spreading some of his own simply to keep amused.

"Parollan's my supervisor," she replied airily, "but I'd a few changes of my own."

"You did bargain, then?"

"Yes, I did and, to restore myself to your good opinion, if they don't produce, the extension is void."

"I do feel better. You wouldn't care to name the conditions?"

"Bored, Broley?"

"I've your best interest at heart, Helva. You're one of my favorite people, ever since that first brawn of yours fought five fleet bullies to a pulp because they laughed at your singing."

Just like Broley to remind her of Jennan. And right now. Well, he'd learn the conditions anyhow so she'd better tell him and keep him friendly.

"The CV drive," he bellowed at the first mention. "You are out of your mind, Helva! Ill just keep those industrials around for you, my dear." He sounded very smug.

"The CV's that hazardous?"

"Oh, my dear Helva, they cannot have been honest with you. Didn't you hear what happened to the test ship?"

"Nine years out, I'm told, but you know perfectly well that a shell-person is far better equipped to handle delicate circuitry than any mobile ..."

"Balls," Broley interrupted her. "I never get time for a decent chat but something has to go wrong."

She was grateful to whatever emergency had interrupted them. A little of Broley's cynicism went a long way. When she'd been in service as long as he, would she be as misogynistic and sour? Or as impassive as Silvia, living through years of quiet desperation on the off-chance that there might be a moment of beauty, of love, tomorrow?

Where was Niall? He must have calmed down enough to think straight by now. Hours had passed since he left. He must have realized that theirs could be a brilliant partnership, rich and full! He was wasted as a supervisor. Why, they'd pay off the CV debt in contract time, if not sooner, with both of them working to that end. Then she wouldn't worry about being independent. No one could harm her with Niall as brawn. If Niall would be her brawn ...

She glanced outside hopefully, surprised that the quick equatorial darkness had closed down on Regulus Base. Lights were few in the Tower, shining only at duty stations and odd offices. She remembered she'd turned on only the lift audios when she'd landed. Now, as she turned on others, she heard muted metal sounds from the distant maintenance shops and the measured tread of the ceremonial sentry, parading the front of the Tower.

Another of the Service's archaic whimsies, Helva thought, knowing that highly specialized sensors around the Base could detect the mere passage of a night insect, identify and destroy it if noxious before the human guardian could react to a more visible or audible invasion. But the sentry's about-face clatter was comforting. She did not feel so alone. Some old traditions did have a special place for which there was no modern substitute. Like ... Damn Broley! Why had he mentioned Jennan?

Broley could locate Niall for her. But he'd want to know the details. And he was unlikely to be sympathetic to her need. According to Broley, shell-people ought to be autonomous as well as self-sufficient.

She hastily answered the strident call signal.

"Well, Parollan may not have conned you into all he planned, but he's certainly celebrating something!" Broley was at his churlish best. "And he started off by tangling up 15 air-cushion vehicles, and three mass transporters and that sheared off two transmitter masts. Why he wasn't killed I don't know, but there wasn't a scratch on him or the three females with him. Fortunately, no one was more than shaken in the other cars, but he's been fined a stiff 1000 credits for such irresponsible behavior. And he had the nerve to laugh. If he weren't a Service Supervisor with plenty of pull, he'd've been sent down to cool off for a few months. And it's all your fault. I'll be glad to see you go. Oh, fardles! He's at the Vanishing Point. And now I have to drag on emergency monitors to ensure order there! If he thinks he can get away with two civil misdemeanors in one night, he's vastly mistaken. I will not have my city disrupted by Parollan's egregious escapades."

Having vented his spleen, he broke the connection.

Parollan was trying to kill himself? She could understand the Vanishing Point visit, the house was notorious for the variety and ingenuity of its entertainments. Most planets had several such establishments, particularly in spaceport cities, and most brawns were regular customers.

It was too unsettling to contemplate his activities there. She devoutly wished that shell-people were allowed the surcease of sleep. They ought to have some way to dispense with mental activity, some refuge from unbearable thoughts. Disobediently her mind ranged back to the Vanishing Point House and its reputation.

"Two households, alike in dignity ... " she began in a resolute voice that echoed through the empty cabins. She wondered: would the Solar Prane/Corviki understand her gratitude for this pastime?

A channel opened and it was no surprise to hear Broley's sharp voice. But he sounded puzzled, not irritated.

"Did you get Niall Parollan discharged for cornering you into that extension?"

"No, I did not."

"Just asking. I simply can't imagine why he's acting the way he is. It just isn't like the Parollan I know."

"What's he doing?" The question was out before Helva could reflect.

"He was doing his usual. Now he seems to have lost what little sense all that strong drink left him. In fact the monitors were all set to close in, when he calls the House jeweler, buys all the girls a bauble, 'to remember him by,' he says. And he goes home. Alone, what's more. And you'll never guess what he's doing now."

"Not unless you tell me."

"He's got an effects buyer in and he is selling off his furnishings, his paintings, his artifacts, his tapes. He spent a fortune on that collection and he won't get half of it back. He's sold his aircar. And he's selling his wardrobe."

Helva tried to quench the sudden hope this news generated. A symbolic rejection of a closed part of his life? Why? Niall knew that brawns kept a home in some port of call. Why should he sell off? Not unless ... She refused to consider the alternative.

"You would have heard," Broley was saying, "if he and Railly had had another one of their fights?"

"I haven't heard a word from Cencom all night."

"You'll remember Broley, won't you, if you do?"

"Yes, Broley, I'll remember you."

Could the girls and the drinking and the V-P House, the farewell jewels, all be part of a bachelor night out?

Caesar and Cleopatra occupied her until dawn, until the technicians and computermen poured back into the Base complex to divert her.

An urgent beep from Cencom and then Railly was on the line, bellowing.

"What'n'ell does Parollan mean, handing in a resignation? What're you up to now, Helva? Let me speak to him. Now!"

"He's not aboard."

"Not aboard? Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"And I suppose you also don't know that Parollan left a resignation on my desk to foul up my morning? That he cited Paragraph 5, subarticle D? I'll say he's suffering from mental aberration. He's out of his mind. If you two think you can put something else over on the Service after that performance yesterday ..." Railly's angry ranting trailed off. "All right, Helva," he began again in a patient voice, "what happened after we cleared out? I thought the whole matter was settled. Parollan was the brawn of your choice, and you two would handle the Beta Corvi mission as outlined. So ... what happened?"

"A partnership is formed by the mutual consent of both parties," Helva replied, speaking slowly and carefully.

There'd been a dangerous edge to Railly's voice, an unspoken threat, and the astounding implication that she and Niall had prearranged yesterday's events.

Then that was why Niall had resigned, trying to stay one jump ahead of Railly, who would certainly have tried to coerce him back on board. So Niall Parollan had made his decision. That was why he'd sold everything off, to have money enough to get away from Regulus, beyond Railly's authority.

It was very difficult to think clearly. And she must keep her wits for Mail's sake. If that was what he had to do, she wouldn't let anything hinder him.

"I am aware of that definition of partnership, Helva," Railly said acidly. "And?"

"Niall was not agreeable to the partnership."

"Now see here, Helva, No more garbage. Niall Parollan begged to join the Service 12 years ago when he found out he was too damned short to be a brawn. Since he made supervisor, he's been telling brawns how to manage their missions, their brains, and their lives. You can't tell me that when Niall Parollan got a ship to the point where she'd opt him as brawn, he'd sheer off? Well I'11 tell you, XH-834, he's going to make that Beta Corvi mission, or he'll be in irons for the rest of his life."

Irons? Helva thought wildly. Another Service holdover? How ridiculous of Railly to think he could 'iron' Niall Parollan!

Calm down and think! Railly would soon find out Niall had sold everything. She'd better lift ... The shrill keen of overworked aircars roused her. She ran an automatic check and saw a full squad deploying at her base. Round one to Railly.

"Broley," she began as soon as she got through, "you've got to warn Parollan. Railly's after him and out for blood."

"Really?" Broley was delighted. "Parollan's on his way to the spaceport now. He got an under-the-counter ticket from the effects buyer. I just found out."

"When's liftoff?"

"At 0900 but ..."

"Warn Parollan that Railly's out to stop him. He's mounted a guard at my base, so I'm stalemated, and the next place he'll close off is the spaceport."

"Helva, really! Parollan is Service ..."

"Not any more. Remember? He resigned. That's why Railly wants to keep him on Regulus."

"But, if Parollan has tendered his resignation, Railly has no authority to stop him."

"Broley, you? Naive? That extension with Railly is void unless Parollan goes as my brawn on the Beta Corvi mission."

"Railly will stop him," Broley agreed, and then realized what Helva had admitted. "You tried to con Parollan into being your brawn?" Broley had a laugh like a dying amphibian, probably from lack of use, Helva thought, but at least he was not annoyed by the choice information she'd withheld. "My dear girl! You are fabulous, absolutely fabulous. Why, that man's pure stud. He'd never lock himself away in a brawn's celibacy ... Great heaving gods, maybe he would! He sent those girls away last night."

"Listen to me, Broley. Warn Niall now that Railly is out to secure his hide for that contract."

"Easy, dearie. If Parollan stays missing, the contract's void?"

"Yes, yes."

"And then you'd be free to listen to my bidders?"

She'd half expected that bargain, so she agreed.

"Railly's a bad enemy, Helva."

"He can do nothing to me without Parollan. And if he tries, I'll call in Double M and SPRIM."

"Them!" Broley was contemptuous.

"They have their uses, like right now."

"But my bidders will have first chance?"

"I agreed, didn't I? Now warn Parollan. And then forget where you called him."

"He's in a public cab, but I'm to remember which one, with all I have on my mind, managing this city?" Broley was chuckling as he broke the connection.

"Lock himself away in celibacy." That was what Broley had said. But Niall had called her beautiful. There had been such desire in his voice, in the wiry body straining against the metal barrier. He'd wanted to look at her, to hold her ...

That long night after she'd returned from Beta Corvi, he'd come to keep her company. He must have been obsessed with her then. And that was why he'd suggested that she take Kurla's empty body. How could she have been so dense not to realize what prompted that bizarre conversation!

Her body that could not function as a body, inhabited by a soul that was all too human. And Kurla's body, that was only flesh, nubile, tactile, beautiful, soul-less.

She could have been tangible for him, to be used by him, able to experience herself that ultimate gift of self ...

Maybe, if Kurla's body had not been appropriated ...

No! No. Resolutely she rejected such devastating thoughts. Broley would keep his word. He'd warn Niall. The rest was up to the man. She was sure he could keep free long enough for Railly to cool off. He had plenty of money. You can always buy safety.

But Railly was a bad enemy. Broley had been right about that. However, an unwilling BB ship is an unmovable object. Even if Railly could catch Niall, she'd only refuse him admittance. She wanted no reluctant brawn.

Reluctant? Hmm, yes, that was the key word. How droll that the first man she'd wanted as brawn since Jennan died should prove reluctant. We lose perspective, we shell-people. We forget that not everyone is eager to share our destiny.

But Niall had wanted to be a brawn! When he couldn't qualify physically, he had raised himself to supervise a whole section of brawns. And then she had to come along, coy and stubborn, and force him to throw away everything he'd achieved, rank, prestige, luxury.

"Broley?"

"Now what?"

"You warned him?"

"I said I would. And I did. I also made a few pointed remarks about his behavior and a warning of my own about future embroilments."

Oh, no, she groaned inwardly, Broley preaching to Niall in his state of mind?

"Where's Parollan now?"

"I can't tell what I don't know."

"You must have some idea."

"None, but you'll be the first to hear when I have. In the meantime, you'd better check your acid level, dear!" Broley signed off with that snide advice.

She had to get in touch with Niall. She'd work with another brawn, if he would stay on as supervisor. She couldn't allow him to sacrifice everything on her account.

She scanned outside anxiously. The area was heavy with small craft traffic. Railly was mounting an intensive search. If Broley wouldn't help, how could she find Niall?

Well, there was another way to accomplish the same end. And it was patent that Railly's objective was to proceed with the Beta Corvi thing. All right, then ...

Before she could open a channel, a signal came through from the Tower. Railly advised her with stiff formality to open her com screen. The picture cleared to show Railly, shoulders thrown back, eyes straight ahead and unfocused, sitting at a littered desk, an aide hovering fearfully in the background. There were two other men in the room; the older one with a sad face wore the SPRIM uniform of green and gold. The other man was younger, with a taciturn expression in his shrewd eyes. He looked completely at ease and idly tapped the elegant boot of his crossed leg.

"Captain Amiking of SPRIM and Mr. Rocco of Double M are here in answer to a complaint registered on your behalf, XH-834." Railly's voice was as grim as his expression.

"Yes, our informant says you have enough credits from your last assignment, Helva, to Pay-off, " Rocco smoothly interjected, appearing not to notice that Railly hadn't finished his prefacing remark.

"Some Federation credits are still pending," Helva replied, conceiving it politic to be truthful, particularly if it would leaven Railly's anger.

"The credits are in but ..." Railly began.

"Then the original financial obligation incurred by the XH-834 has been satisfied?" Amiking asked in a gentle voice.

"Yes, however ..."

"The contingent of servicemen clustered so congenially on the landing pad occupied by Helva are there, then, to protect her from the importunities of independent bidders?" Rocco asked.

Railly compressed his lips into a very thin line as he stared coldly back at the Double M representative.

"Otherwise it looks very much like a form of moral restraint, for Helva could certainly not remove herself, if she so desired, without charring them. Which a BB ship cannot do. They ought to withdraw. Immediately."

"This is a Service Base, Mr. Rocco ..."

"Immediately, Chief Railly, or Captain Amiking and I will be forced to suspect coercion." The Double M agent smiled indolently but his voice, too, had a cold, hard sound.

Railly barked at his aide, who fumbled with the corn-unit. Almost instantly the men on her landing site began to disperse.

"Have they left, Helva?"

"Yes, Mr. Rocco. But you must understand that I extended my Central Worlds contract."

"So I'd heard," Rocco remarked, his eyes glittering as he turned politely to her. "Which makes a guard totally uncalled for. However, I'd also heard that one of the conditions of the extension specifically requested by you cannot now be filled through circumstances beyond your control. Therefore, that contract is invalid ..."

"That contract is not invalid until Central Worlds has failed to fulfill that condition!" Railly said, emphasizing his words with an angry fist on the desk,

"Which they cannot do," Rocco countered with equal emphasis. "Niall Parollan was the brawn of your choice, isn't that correct, Helva?"

"Yes, but ..."

"He has resigned from the Service and is no longer available ..."

"Niall Parollan will be on board the XH-834 by nightfall," Railly bellowed, rising to his feet to tower over the others. "That condition will be met and the contracted assignment will proceed."

"If you can find Niall Parollan," Rocco amended.

"Gentlemen, this is ridiculous," Helva said, raising her voice to be heard. "Yes, I wanted Niall Parollan as my partner. I am sorry that he could not oblige me. I deeply regret that he felt it necessary to resign from the Service to emphasize that reluctance. But I would not coerce him into accepting an onerous duty ... Hound him. I'd rather discuss another brawn assignment"

"Why you fickle-minded, double-crossing, wirehaired retard of a tin-assed martyr," a rasping voice roared from her main corridor. "You'll discuss another brawn assignment?"

Niall Parollan stood by the open drive-room hatch, his torn mechanics overall grimed, his angry face scratched and smeared.

"Don't try to fool me, Helva, that's Parollan," Railly yelled from the comscreen.

"It is, and I deal with him first, Railly!" Helva cried. She cut the connection, slammed the lock shut, activated the tamperproof field on her hull. She was going to thrash this out right now. "What do I mean by discussing another brawn assignment? What alternative do you leave me, you drunken, womanizing, litersized knave! How else can I get Railly to lift the search and let you go free?"

"Free? Who's free? The moment I leave you alone you're ready to sell yourself right back into slavery! Of all the stupid, half brained, short-sighted, fardling foolish ..."

"Foolish?" Helva sputtered with rage and indignation. "Look at you, selling off 7 years' hard work and rank because you're too damned bed-happy to go on one lousy mission for me. Force me to mortgage my soul for the second time in 2 days ..."

"Rocco and Amiking got here, didn't they? They were to see Railly before he got out of bed to be sure you'd go free. Next thing I know that queen gossip Broley is telling me there's a full search on and ..." His agitated recital broke off. He gritted his teeth, his eyes flashing so angrily Helva knew that Broley's sermon had been read in pure vitriol. "Rocco and Amiking are with Railly now, aren't they?" he asked with considerably less vehemence.

"Yes, they are." She matched her tone to his, too relieved to have him safely aboard to prolong a quarrel. "And you'd better have a sound explanation for Railly in nothing flat, because there's a no-nonsense penetration team assembling on the pad. And Railly knows my release syllables, too."

Niall didn't need that reminder as he heard the penetration team clank against the outer hull.

"You fool, you could have been all clear," he murmured, more desperate now than angry.

"Just the Beta Corvi mission, Niall. That's what he wants."

Niall jerked his head up. "I don't think it's that simple even for Railly."

"If the CV drive's good, I'm ahead of the game," she said. "If it's bust, then I'm free and so are you!"

"Free?" Niall repeated softly but there was an odd grin on his tired face. He put one hand out, gently stroked the panel, sensitive fingertips finding and running along the all but invisible seam of her quarters. "I'm no more free than you are, Helva. But, as the gods are my witness, I tried to get you out of this fardling foul contract I cooked up." Deliberately he jammed one fist against the column, breaking the skin and bloodying his hand.

"Stop it, Parollan. If we couldn't settle a piddling 500,000 debt in less than 10 years, we're not the team I think we are!"

He had cocked his fist to strike again, but he stepped back, staring at her, eyes wide with surprise and hope.

"You know, you're right. Absolutely right."

"Of course I am. And if you've got to exact penance, get the hell on the com and persuade Railly to call off that penetration team!"

He was already at the console, banging for vision, forgetting that Helva would do it faster for him.

"What'n'hell's going on out there, Railly? Damnall, can't a brawn leave his ship alone on a Service Base, for chrissake, without finding her subjected to some asinine indignity? I thought that nardy Beta Corvi flap had top priority! Where are the specs? Where are Breslaw's models? I need Dobrinon's files. How in hell can we lift off in 5 days unless you move those lazy techs!"

"Parollan," Railly began with a full spleen to unload, "you're under arrest. You're fined. You're ..."

"I resigned, remember, Railly?" Niall roared back, gathering fresh impetus. "You have no authority to fine or arrest or order me anywhere. I'm a citizen of Central Worlds, acting as mobile partner to the Helva-834. She contracted a mission with you, stipulating in Paragraph 6, Section 1, that she would have free choice of aforesaid partner, to wit, one Niall Parollan. There was nothing taped about the rank or status of said Niall Parollan. And if you think you can make something of it, my resignation is time-stamped before those Federation credits came in. Therefore, before the contract extension took effect Now, if you want to tie this ship up in a court battle over who bosses who, go right ahead. But if you want to get this ship off her expensive ass to Beta Corvi to vet your lovely new power source, you'd better start moving!"

Helva should have known that Niall would neither explain or humble himself. And perhaps such an offensive was the only effective method of dealing with Railly. She could feel sorry for the Chief's aide, standing in paralyzed shock at Railly*s elbow. She was glad for his sake as well as theirs that Rocco and Amiking were still there. In fact, she didn't doubt that Niall counted on their presence to force Railly to accept this bald revision of the facts.

And the Chief was going to have to accept this version. He had no choice and no recourse, not before representatives of powerful organizations that he could not antagonize.

"You'll move, Parollan," he vowed in a strangled voice, "and you'll work like you never believed a team could work."

"Naturally."

"And one day ..." Railly grated out the words, "one day, Parollan, you're going to outsmart yourself!"

"No prophecies, Chief, just the tapes and models. Nice to see you, Rocco, Captain. Signing off."

As the screen blanked, Niall turned back to Helva, his expression oddly defenseless.

"He'd give his pension to know I already have, wouldn't he, Helva?" He spoke in a quiet, resigned voice, but his wide grin took away the sting. And the look in his eyes, possessive, proud, loving, intensely alive, made Helva's mind reel with joy.

They'd come through this crisis together after all. They could face any challenge. They knew each other better than she and Jennan ever had. They knew each other's strengths, and flaws. This was going to be bright heaven with fireworks, a constant stretching toward challenge and achievement. Helva longed to extend this ardent moment. Such pure happiness was so rare, so fragile.

The Cencom beeped to shatter it.

"Ah, Mr. Parollan? I mean, XH, ah, NH-834?" a nervous voice stammered.

"Parollan here," he said without glancing away from her column, knowing she'd open the channel.

"Sir, we can't use the lift to make delivery because ..."

Helva cut him off as she belayed the tamper field, restored the lift power and slid the lock open.

"Fardles, what a way to take command. Look at me!" Niall swore, suddenly aware of externals again, of the filthy clothes he wore. "I'd've been cleaner if they'd dragged me back." He began to strip off the torn clothes as he strode toward the pilot's quarters. "Order me some gear from Base quartermaster, Helva. They know my size. Tell someone to pick up a small black carrier on guard post 17. And, oh yes, the perimeter sensors are shorted between 17 and 18."

He continued to give instructions while showering, dressing in the hastily delivered shipsuit, grabbing a quick meal from the galley. Neither her lift nor com circuits were free a moment. The main cabin sprouted additional tables to accommodate the drive models and the tape files Dobrinon rushed over. Niall sent for every filmstrip from the exploratory ship. He seemed indefatigable, yet he'd been up the previous night and running half the day. Railly could never work Niall as hard as he'd work himself ... and her.

"Hey, Helva," Niall said suddenly, squinting toward the open lock, "turn on some light. I can barely see."

"I'd no idea it had got so late." She scanned the equatorial dusk.

Just then the mellow brass voice of a trumpet from the top of Base Tower sounded the ceremonial day's end call. Day's end ... and requiem. The rich measured notes floated over the great Service Base, out to the distant cemetery under the great trees. Once she'd heard it only as requiem. Tonight ... each day dies, Helva thought, to let night with its darkness for sorrowing and sleep complete its course and bring ... a new day. Taps, a simple, poignant statement of end and beginning.

Day is done Gone the sun, From the sea, from the land, from the sky. All is well. Rest in peace, God is nigh!

Goodbye, Jennan. Welcome, Niall.

As the last note died away in dark space and in her heart, she saw Niall's knowing eyes on her, wary, expectant.

"Such a sentimental tradition for a modern Service," Helva murmured. "Blowing taps at sundown."

"And you love it," he said, unexpectedly, in a grating voice. "You'd have tears in your eyes, if you could."

"Yes," she admitted. "I would. If I could."

"It's a good thing I'm so nasty. Balances your soft heart-partner," he said. "Helva! Don't ever change."

He might as well have been singing.

THE END

About the Author

Anne McCaffrey shuttles between her home in Ireland and the United States, where she picks up awards and honors and greets her myriad fans. She is one of the field's most popular authors.