Get off the Unicorn

A Meeting of Minds

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

It was as if she could feel the separate cerebral muscles relaxing, expanding, just as her tall slender body went gradually limp. But it was primarily the mental relief that Damia sought so far away from her control Tower at the Federated Telepath and Teleport installation on Aurigae. It was the utter peace of deep space she required as anodyne to the constant demands of her position as Psionic Prime, responsible for the flow of commerce and communication in this Sector of Federated Worlds, the Nine-Star League. She was young, true, barely twenty; but age is relative, particularly when the need is great, and her mental talents were unusually mature. Furthermore, she was of the Raven Clan, bom into a tremendously talented family, carefully indoctrinated and trained to assume an executive role as the influence of Federated Worlds expanded into new star systems, needing more Prime Talents.

Occasionally, even her young mind felt the strain and required respite from the insistent murmur of broadcasting thoughts that beat, beat, beat against hers: little minds which could not conceive the forces that Damia, Aurigan Prime, could marshall in gestalt with the mighty dynamos of the Tower.

With a flick of a finger, Damia screened out the overbrilliant starlight and opened her eyes. The softened stargleams, points of gem fire in the black of space, winked and pulsed at her. Idly she identified the familiar patterns they made, these silent friends. Somehow the petty grievances that built up inside her were gently dispersed as the overwhelming impersonality of cold nothingness brought them into proper perspective.

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

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

She was forced to admit herself at fault. But how had Afra known? Unless Larak had told him. She sighed. Yes, Larak would have known she was eavesdropping. Though he was the only T-3 among her brothers and sisters, he had always been extremely sensitive to her mind touch. And she and Larak could always overwhelm any combination of the others, even if Jeran, Cera, and Ezro, all T-ls, teamed up against them. Somehow, she switched mental gears, doubling the capability of other minds within her focus.

But it had humiliated her to be reamed by Afra. Well, better by that yellow-eyed, green-skinned T-4 Capellan than her father, acting in his capacity as Earth Prime. She rather hoped that her father had not learned of her breach of T– etiquette.

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

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

In a way, the fact that she could handle Prime duties with no higher ratings than a T-6 to assist had certain disadvantages. The Tower staff could handle only routine, planetary traffic, but she had to be on hand for all interstellar telepathic and teleportation commerce.

It would be wonderful to have a T-3 with her: someone who could understand. Not someone… be honest with yourself out here in space, Damia. Some man. Only men shy away from you as if you'd developed Lynx-sun cancers. And the only other unmarried Prime was her own brother, Jeran. Come to think about Jeran, the smug tone in his recent mind-touches as they exchanged cargoes and messages between Deneb and Auriga undoubtedly meant that he had found a likely mate, too.

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

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

An aura. A mere wisp of the presence of something. Something… alien! Alien! Damia recomposed herself. She disciplined her mind to a pure, clear, uncluttered shaft. She touched the aura. Recognition of her touch, retreat, return.

The aura was undeniably alien, but so faint that she would have doubted its existence except that her finely trained mind was not given to error.

An exultation as hot as lust caused her blood to pound in her ears. She was not wrong. The trace was there.

Taking a deep breath, she directed an arrow-fine mental shout across the light-years, nadirward, to the Earth Prime FT & T Tower, high above the Grand Canyon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It responded—

The aura.

You reported a spacecraft.

Father, how else could anything cross the intergalactic sea?

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

I say, spacecraft. I touched it.

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

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

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

A light-year.

With only a T-6 Station as control? Supposing, daughter, something happened to you? Supposing that alien aura decided to home in on you…

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

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

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

She allowed him to join her mind completely as she led him out beyond the blaze of stars. She led him directly to the alien trace. The aura was palpable but so far away that only the extraordinary perception of two powerful minds could sense it.

I caught anticipation, curiosity, Jeff told his daughter thoughtfully as he withdrew from the tight focus. And caution, too. Whatever it is, is approaching our galaxy.

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

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

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

Larak's training T-3s to augment old Gut-man on Altair. The old man sleeps most of the time but he's the only Prime we have for that Sector until Eva's older, Jeff replied. I'll send you Afra. He'd be better anyhow.

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

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

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

Damia, Jeff's tone crackled with disapproval. That is an irrational, childish and insulting remark. Repair your attitude. His tone altered. If you hadn't, at one time or another, intimidated every T-2, -3 and -4 in the Federated Worlds, I could send someone else—

And matchmake into the bargain? She tinged her thoughts with derision, and then advised smugly. Your dynastic plans will bear better fruit with Jeran. Only don't let him settle for anything less than a T-4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damia basked in her father's praise. He didn't give it lightly.

If you were only able to relate more to the people around you, he continued, spoiling the compliment, then added briskly, I'll send Afra on directest. I can trust his impartiality, and to Damia's amazement, her father chuckled.

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

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

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

But Afra was to come to Auriga.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alien? Near Damia? The fleeting maternal concern was quickly supplanted by professional curiosity as the Rowan scanned Jeff's recent experience beyond Auriga. Of course, Afra can go. But why on earth would Damia think Afra couldn't be reassigned as you see fit. He often has, but it's true I never get on as well with other T-3's.

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

Jeff Raven, there has never been a single thought between me and Afra that—

Jeff laughed and she sputtered at him indignantly.

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

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

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

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

Are you sure you're only T-3? he asked, a little surprised at the firmness in the Capellan's touch.

I'm in gestalt, after all, Afra replied, good-naturedly. And, in the course of twenty-odd years in the presence of the fine Raven touch, even a lowly T-3 learns a few tricks. From the expression on the Rowan's face, I'd hazard that Damia is being discussed. What's she up to now?

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

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

Damia! Afra said wamingly but too late.

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

She regretted her impulsive action almost immediately. But Afra's capsule was opening and he was swinging himself over the edge. She could not have missed his trenchant disapproval if she'd been a mere T-15. He stood up, looking down at her, the same aloof, contained man. Now why, Damia wondered irritably, had she expected Afra to change? Had she? And would Afra condescend to comment on those changes in her?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Familiarity breeds contempt, huh?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Just told them I've been resting. I'll account for your presence as a preliminary survey for FT & T. Right? As if any 'of those lamebrains could 'search' me," she concluded contemptuously.

"So true," Afra replied, indicating in his public mind his professional respect for her.

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

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

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

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

"And… ?"

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

"You don't sound too sure."

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

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

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

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

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

"Them," she dismissed those candidates scornfully.

"Young Nicos, the T-5 working with Jeran on Deneb, was mighty taken with you. Calm down a bit—"

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

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

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

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

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

He inclined his head in apology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sodan?"

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

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

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

"Why are you tired?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Larak, relay back to Jeff that this Sodan…

It's got a name?

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

Coming, Larak responded crisply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tremendous power source in the ship. Tremendous, but by the mighty atom, Larak, you can't get past the public mind. Anyhow, I couldn't. And Damia hasn't." Afra rose, paced restlessly back and forth in the narrow Tower.

"Then it's possible he has informed them of the contact?"

"I can't tell."

Larak held Afra's glance, and then sighed.

"It'll be a shame to have to destroy him," he said slowly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playing with her? The Rowan was angry now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Damia flushed, Larak roared with laughter.

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

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

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

Resentfully, Damia dampered her emotional outpouring.

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

Larak's face was a study in innocent hurt.

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

Damia looked guiltily at Afra.

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

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

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

"Oh, you men are all alike. Details, details!"

"Well, sure," Larak replied. "But if details like that bore you, they fascinate me. I'll ask him myself."

"You can't reach that far!"

"I planned to hop a ride with you tomorrow."

Damia hesitated, looking for assistance from Afra, who shrugged noncommittally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At least, this generation's representative has sense enough to go to bed when he's out on his feet," he muttered. As he passed Larak, the boy winked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us? Sodan queried.

My planet, my people… me.

I'm only interested in you, he replied.

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

There are many people on your planets? he asked.

Planet.

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

Doesn't your sun have several life-supporting satellites?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damia, he is only a mind!

Stunned, Damia hestitated, and the Larak-focus plunged forward again, battering against the shielded Sodan.

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

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

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

If he has nothing to hide, he will let you see, the Larak-focus continued implacably.

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

For what seemed an eternity, Sodan hesitated.

If I could, I would, he said softly and with honest regret.

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

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

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

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

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

Frantically, even as she felt herself blacking out from the tremendous drain on her resources, Damia tried to deflect that blow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeran reached with her, signaling the flagship's T-3 to assist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damia lives? Damia lives!

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

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

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

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

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

With a sigh of relief, Isthia straightened.

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

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

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

Isthia waved that aside as of incidental importance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Struggling against a will determined to keep her asleep, Damia fought her way to semi-consciousness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can't remember," Damia groaned, blinking away the tears so she could at least see clearly.

"Every rating in FT & T does."

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

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

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

"I'm putting you back to sleep, Damia. We're very proud of you but you must allow your mind to heal in sleep."

" 'Great nature's second course, that knits the ravelled 'sleeve of care.' What's knitting, Isthia? I've never known," Damia heard herself babbling with a cool scalliony taste in her throat as the drug spread.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her body strained with the effort to reach out only a few inches a mind that once had blithely coursed light-years, but she soon managed to communicate her crime.

I burned out Larak and Afra. I killed them. I linked to the Larak-focus and killed them to destroy Sodan.

I saved myself and killed them.

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

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

Damia heard an approving, admiring murmur from

Rowan.

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

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

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

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

"Afra lives," the Rowan said.

"But Larak? Why Larak?" Damia demanded, desperately striving to touch what she felt they must still be hiding from her.,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heavens, hasn't anyone moved me in months? she asked herself, noting that her mental tone was firm. She lay back in bed, deliberating. Poor Damia, she said in a self-derisive tone, ever since that encounter with that dreadful mind-alien, she's been nothing but a T-4, T-9? T-3? Damia tried out the different grades for size and then discarded them all, along with her histrionics.

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

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

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

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

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

Such a pitiful thing she was: a spoiled, rotten-hearted child, demanding a new toy to dispel boredom when all the time…

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

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

"You've been calling me," she whispered, halfquestioning, half-stating.

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

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

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

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

Closing his eyes, Afra nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And how could you… a T-3… manage to mask…" she went on, growing indignant.

"Familiarity also bred certain skills."

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

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

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

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

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