The Ship Who Sang

The Ship Who Killed

Every diverted synapse in Helva's shell-encased body vibrated in unconditional revolt against the autocracy of Central Worlds Service.

"All haste, all haste," she snarled in impotent revolt to her sister ship, the 822, on the private ship-to-ship band on which not even Cencom could eavesdrop.

The Seld-Ilsa snorted unsympathetically. "You're doing something, which is more than I can say in Mediation Service. I've spent weeks and weeks on end waiting for them to make up their minds which planetary crisis is most crucial. By the time we get there, critical mass has been reached and we have a helluva mess to clean up."

"You think MedServ doesn't procrastinate?" Helva retorted sharply. "Why Jennan and I. . ." and she stopped, startled to have been able to mention his name.

Ilsa took advantage of the brief pause and grumbled on, oblivious to Helva's stunned silence.

"You'd think they'd've briefed us better in training. When I think of the situations I've already encountered that were never even mentioned! Theory, procedure, technique, that's all we handled. Not a single practical suggestion. Just garbage, garbage, trivial garbage. They don't need brain ships, they need computers!" The 822 ranted on. "Stupid, senseless, unemotional computers."

Helva spotted the fallacies in the 822's complaints but remained quiet. She and Ilsa had been classmates and she knew from past experience the voids in the other's personality.

"I heard" the 822 said confidentially, "that your mission has to do with that blue block building in the hospital annex."

Helva adjusted her right fin scanner but the oblong structure was devoid of any unusual feature that would indicate its contents.

"Have you heard when I'm supposed to hasten away from here again?" she asked Ilsa hopefully.

"Can't talk now; here comes Seld back. See you around."

Helva watched as the 822s brawn-half ascended to the airlock and the SI-822 lifted off Regulus Center Base. Seld had partied with Jennan in Helva one time when both ships were down at Leviticus IV. Seld had a passable bass, as she recalled it. Envy briefly touched her. She flicked back to the ambiguous hospital annex, savagely wondering what kind of emergency this would be. And would she remain an X-designate the rest of her service life?

She had set down at the end of the great Regulus field, the farthest edge from the Service Cemetery. Despite her resignation to Jennan's loss, despite Theoda's healing tears, Helva could not bring herself to grind more salt into her sorrow by proximity to Jennan's grave. Perhaps in a century or so. . . Consequently, waiting around on Regulus was painful. And with the 822 gone, she could no longer divert her pain into anger at the prolonged wait she must endure.

"KH-834, your 'brawn' is on her way with assignment tape," Cencom alerted her.

Helva acknowledged the message, excitement stirring within her. It was almost a relief to receive a double initial call, the pleasure overriding her twinge of regret that her 'brawn' partner was feminine. It was a relief, too, to experience any emotion after the numbing of Jennan's death. The Annigoni experience had broken her apathy.

A ground car zipped out from the direction of the massive Control and Barracks complex, skidding to a stop at her base. Without waiting, Helva lowered the lift and watched as a tiny figure hefted three pieces of baggage onto the platform.

"K" meant to stay a while, Helva decided. The lift ascended and shortly her new brawn was framed in the open lock, against the brilliant Regulan sky.

"Kira of Canopus requesting permission to board the XH-834," said the young woman, saluting smartly toward Helva's position behind the titanium bulkhead.

"Permission granted. Welcome aboard, Kira of Canopus."

The girl kicked the limp lump of a fabric bag unceremoniously aboard. But she carefully carried the other two back to the pilot's cabin. The odd-shaped one Helva identified, after a moment's reflection, as an ancient stringed instrument called a guitar.

"Naturally they'd send me someone musically oriented," she thought, not at all sure she was pleased with this infringement on her most cherished memories of Jennan. She ruthlessly suppressed this unworthy thought with the admonition that the majority of service personnel were musically oriented. The infinite possibilities of the art passed travel time admirably.

Kira flipped open the other compact case and Helva, surreptitiously peeking, noticed it was full of vials and other medical equipment. Kira inspected the contents with quick fingers and, closing the case, strapped it with care against the rigors of acceleration on the shelves behind the bed.

Kira was, in form and nature as well as sex, the antithesis of Jennan. Since she was in a carping mood, Helva wondered how much of that was intentional. But that would mean Cencom had more sensitivity than Helva decided, privately, they were computationally blessed with.

Kira of Canopus couldn't weigh more than 40 kilos fully suited. Her narrow face with slanted cheekbones had a delicacy which appeared ill-suited to bear the designation brawn. Her hair, dark brown, was braided tightly in many loops around her long, oval skull. Her eyes, wide set and almond shaped, were of a clear, cool, deep green, thickly lashed Her fingers, slim and tapering, were as dainty as her narrow feet, oddly graceful in heavy shipboots. Her movements, swift and sure, were quicksilver, full of restless energy, dartingly inquisitive.

Kira reentered the main cabin. Helva, used to Theoda's lethargic movements, had to adjust quickly.

Kira inserted the order tape, locking it into its niche in the pilot's board. As the code ran through, a startled exclamation was wrung from Helva.

"Three hundred thousand babies?"

Kira's laugh was a staccato arpeggio of mirth.

"Assignment Stork, by the holies!"

"You're only temporary?" questioned Helva, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. There was a magnetism about Kira that appealed to Helva.

Kira smiled wryly. "This assignment will take some time. Only 30,000 are collected already. Even in this day and age, it takes time to make babies."

"I haven't got facilities. . ." Helva began aghast at the thought of becoming a nursery. She broke off as the tape elaborated on the condition of the proposed cargo. "Babies in ribbons?"

Kira, who had had previous briefing on their mission, laughed at Helva's outraged reaction.

The tape continued remorselessly and Helva understood the significance of the miles of plastic tubing and tanks of fluid that had been placed in her not over generous cargo spaces.

In the system of the star Nekkar, an unexpected radiation flare had sterilized the entire population of its newly colonized planet. A freak power failure had resulted in the total loss of the planet's embryo banks. The KH-834's mission was to rush embryos to Nekkar from planets that had answered the emergency call.

In the very early days of space travel, when man had still not walked on Mars, or Jupiter's satellites, a tremendous advance had been made in genetics. A human fetus in its early stages was transferred from one womb to another, the host mother bringing the child to term and giving it birth without having an actual relationship to it. A second enormous stride forward in propagating the race of man occurred when a male sperm was scientifically united with female ova. Fertilization was successful and the resultant fetus was brought to term, the child growing to normal, well-balanced maturity.

It became a requirement of those in hazardous professions, or those with highly desirable dominant characteristics of intelligence or physical perfection, to donate sperm and ova to what became known as the Race Conservation Agency.

As civilization expanded onto newer, rawly dangerous worlds, the custom was for young men and women to leave their seed with the RCA on reaching their majority. It was good sense to have such a viable concentration of genetically catalogued seed available. Thus, given a lack, say, in a generation of a particularly desirable ethnic group, sufficient additional embryos could be released to restore the ecological balance.

On an individual basis, the young wife, untimely widowed, might bear her husband's children from his seed on file at the RCA. Or a man, wishing a son of certain pronounced genetic characteristics to perpetuate a family name or business, would apply to the bank. There were, of course, ridiculous uses made of the RCA faculties. Women in the thrall of a hysteria over a noted spaceranger or artist would apply to the RCA for his seed if the male in question was agreeable. But naturally conceived children were the rule rather than the exception. Helva herself had been the naturally inseminated child of her parents.

Generally, the RCA served Central Worlds as a repository in case of just such an emergency as had arisen at Nekkar. The inability of individuals to propagate the race. An appeal had reached the Main RCA on Earth to locate and deliver 300,000 fertilized ova of genetic type similar to the Nekkarese, RCA had 30,000 on hand and had forwarded the call to all major RCA banks throughout the Central Worlds asking for contributions, which the KH-834 would pick up and deliver to Nekkar.

The tape ended with a silent hold cue to Helva. It took her a moment to realize that, though she had the mission information, she had received nothing on her new partner. No matter how temporary this assignment, it would take time. Some basic biography would be essential for Helva to function effectively in partnership with Kira. Obediently she cut the tape, activating a record-store of the balance for later playback. It would appear there were many unusual factors in this assignment. Central Worlds moves in mysterious ways, itself to sustain.

"Well," Helva exclaimed, to end the brief silence after the mission portion of the tape was silent. "I hadn't expected motherhood at my tender age. I see I have understimated the demands Central Worlds makes of its minions."

Her attempt at levity touched off a violent response in Kira and Helva wondered what under a first magnitude star had she got for a partner.

"Read this tape on me before we proceed with the mission," Kira said in a dead voice, all her previous vivacity wiped out.

She slammed the store button, shunting the mission tape to the ship files, and inserted a second reel. With an almost savage twist she turned on the audio, sitting stiffly erect and motionless as the tape played back, either deaf or impervious to the biograph.

Kira Falernova Mirsky of Canopus had finished all but a year of brawn training. She came of a Service-oriented family that had brought up 10 generations to illustrious, and once, exalted careers in Central Worlds' service branches. She had left the Training School on marital leave that had lasted two years, ending at her husband's death. A long term of hospitalization and therapy followed, during which time, the tape noted, Kira had asked for and taken medical training but did not reapply for brawn education. She had responded to a high level request to take this temporary assignment, since her training had matched perfectly the needs of this particular emergency.

Then followed a rattle of personal indices, emotional, psychological and educational, which Helva translated, as she was expected to, to mean that Kira Mirsky of Canopus would make an unusually fine brawn if she gave herself half a chance. The tape ended abruptly, as if there should be more. The omission, probably on the last tag of the mission reel, seemed to sing out its absence far louder than the tritest concluding evaluation or recommendations. Central Worlds had many devious facets and perhaps such an obvious omission was one. Surely Kira sensed it. That damned biograph left too much unsaid, particularly apparent to a brawn trainee. Helva's mind danced with the possibilities and gnawed mental teeth against the silent hold-cue. In the meantime, Helva was faced with a very awkward situation, her new partner stiff with anticipation and predisposed by Central Worlds to make a bad first adjustment to Helva. Helva made a rude, sibilant noise and was relieved to see Kira react in surprise to it

"Brains they got?" Helva demanded contemptuously. "I don't call that a proper tape. They forgot half the garbage anyway. Ssscheh!" and she repeated her exasperation noise. "Oh, well, I expect we'll do fine together if only because they left out the usual nonsense. Besides, the mission is temporary."

Kira said nothing, but the woodenness left her slender body as if an anticipated ordeal had been canceled. She swallowed hard, licking her lips nervously, still unsure of her position, having steeled her nerves for something unpleasant.

"Let's get the cargo aboard and turn me into a rocking ship."

Kira rose, her body awkward, but she managed to smile at Heiva's column. "With pleasure. Have your holds been outfitted?"

" 'With yards and yards of lacing and a bicycle built for two on it,' " Helva replied, quipping from an ancient patter song. She was determined to establish a comfortable empathy.

Kira's smile was less tentative and her body motion became more fluid.

"Yes, it would look like that, I guess."

"Of course I've never seen a bicycle built for two."

"Or a purple cow?" and Kira giggled girlishly.

"Hmmm. Purple cow, my dear brawn, is an all too apt analogy for our present occupation," Helva replied, ignoring the edge to Kira's laughter. "And don't tell me I'll have room for 300,000 mechanical teats in the cargo space Central Worlds saw fit to give me."

"Oh, no," Kira said, "We don't have but the first 100,000 accounted for as of the time the tape was cut. We'll swing out from Regulus toward Nekkar, picking up donations as we go, deliver them within the 4-week time limit when the fetuses must be either implanted or decanted, and swing around the Wheel until we do meet the quota."

Helva knew this from the tape. "Three hundred thousand isn't a very big number for a planetary population of a million that needs to expand."

"My dear KH-834," and Kira savored the name, "the word 'temporary' particularly when used by our beloved Service, has elastic qualities of infinite expansion. Also, another team, with drone transports, is recruiting orphans from unsocialized worlds to insure the proper age variations. But born children aren't our concern."

"The heavens be praised!" Helva muttered under her breath. She did not have room to transport many active live bodies nor the inclination, not so soon after Ravel.

Kira smiled back at Helva over her shoulder as she contacted the Hospital Unit to request transfer.

"Will you activate the pumping equipment?" she asked Helva, who was in the process of doing just that.

The miles of plastic tubing, once filled with the tiny sacs of fertilized ova, would contain the nutritive and amniotic fluids necessary for the growth of the embryos.

The continuous ribbon of tiny compartments, each with its minute living organism, was prepared for the voyage with the caution and care of a major surgical operation on a head of planet. Each segment must contact an intake point for the nutritive fluid and an outgo valve for the dispersal of wastes. Each meter of ribbon was inspected to insure that the proper contact was made. The ribbon and its fluids as well as the encasing tube buffered the embryos with more invulnerability against the rigors of space travel than had they been carried in a natural womb. As long as the KH-834 made the journey to Nekkar within the 4 weeks, all 30,000 fetuses would live to be born.

It became apparent to Helva that Kira was dedicated, in a detached if professional way, to the assignment. Central Worlds might be relying on a maternal instinct as additional insurance for the mission. Helva, to her inner amusement, found herself, the pituitarily inhibited shell-person, rising nobly to the challenge. Kira, obviously young enough to some day enjoy motherhood, was completely uninvolved. Yet the affinity Helva felt toward these minute voyagers was basically a shell reaction. They were, after all, encapsulated as she was, the difference being that they would one day burst from their scientific husks, as she never could nor even desired to. Still, she felt a growing protectiveness, above and beyond the ordinary, toward her passengers. The situation didn't appear to touch Kira's psyche, and that puzzled Helva.

She struggled to identify the coldness of Kira's reaction and could not. Then the technicians who had effected the installation of the precious cargo withdrew, and Helva was busy with the mechanics of takeoff.

It was a pleasure to have a passenger who knew how to take care of herself. Not that Theoda had been a burden in the psychological sense of the word, but Kira knew the procedures and Helva did not need to spare a thought toward her. Takeoff was under minimum thrust, not that the triply buffered embryos could suffer damage had she blasted off with all power, but Helva preferred to take no unnecessary chances and there was plenty of time to reach Nekkar in Bootes' sector.

First planet of call would be Talitha, where 40,000 future citizens of Nekkar had been prepared. After lift, Kira made a careful check on all circuits in the nursery, confirmed her findings with Helva's remote monitors and informed Cencom that they were clear of Regulus and driving toward Talitha.

The formalities ended, Kira swung slowly around in the gimbaled pilot's chair. Her slenderness lost in the padded armchair, she seemed both too fragile and young for her responsibilities.

"The larder is well stocked," Helva suggested.

Kira stretched leisurely, moving her shoulders around to ease the taut muscles across her back. She shook her head sharply, sending a shower of hair fasteners slithering across the cabin as her braids came tumbling out of the coronet. Helva watched, fascinated. Shoulder-length hair was the common fashion among spacewomen. The tips of Kira's braids brushed the floor. Whatever maturity she possessed departed with the severe coiffeur. Like the prototype of an ancient fantasy creature, Kira rose from the pilot's chair and moved across the deck to the galley.

"You wouldn't by any remote computational factor stock a beverage known as coffee?" Kira asked wistfully.

Helva chuckled, remembering Onro. It seemed to be an occupational necessity.

"I have three times as much as normal Service inventory suggests," Helva assured her.

"Oh," and Kira's eyes rolled upward in mock rapture, "you know! The ship that brought me here was a provincial transport from Draconis and hadn't a drop on board. I nearly perished."

Kira flipped open the proper cabinet and broke the heatseal, sniffing deeply as the fragrant aroma rose from the heating liquid. She gulped down a sip, grimacing against the heat. With an expression of intense relief, she leaned against the counter. "You and I are going to do nobly together, Helva. I'm sure of it."

Helva caught the rasp of fatigue in the lilting voice. Would she always receive passengers in the advance stages of exhaustion? Or was something the matter with Helva that all her visitors tended to fall asleep once aboard her? As a nursery ship this could be an asset, Helva thought acidly.

"It's been a long day for you, Kira. Why don't you get some rest? I'm staying up anyway."

Kira chuckled, knowing that the brain ships never slept. She glanced toward the cargo holds.

"I'll listen with all ears perked," Helva reassured her.

"I'll just finish my coffee and take a short snooze," Kira agreed. At the cabin door she turned back toward Helva's column, cocking her head slightly, her green eyes sparkling.

"Helva, do you peek?" Her expression was prim to the pursing of her lips.

"I assure you," Helva replied with great dignity, "I am a very properly mannered ship, Scout."

"I shall expect you to conduct yourself decorously at all times as behooves a person in your position in this," Kira replied so haughtily that Helva imagined her pedigree sprinkled with royal ancestors.

Head high, Kira stepped into her cabin only to trip on one of her swinging braids and tumble into the room. Helva was sorely tempted to get a glimpse of Kira's face.

"Don't you dare look in!" Kira exclaimed, her voice breaking with laughter.

Helva had promised nothing about turning off sound and heard Kira giggling softly. In a short while only the sound of a sleeper's shallow, slow breathing broke the stillness of the ship.

Helva took out of file the portion of the tape which followed the hold-cue. The excerpt was brief and enigmatic.

"Scout Mirsky is a practicing Dylanist, accepting this assignment in Central World Service without suspension of her craft. Accordingly she is not to be permitted shore leave on the following planets, as her activities constitute an infringement of planetary laws restricting proselytization of government groups and/or an embarrassment to Central World Service: Ras Algothi, Ras Alhague, and Sabek. Subject Scout and Ship designate are not, repeat, are not, to approach planets of stars Baham and Homan in the Pegasus Sector or planets of stars Beid and Keid in the Eridanus Sector."

Nothing could be clearer than that, but the reasoning behind such restrictions was unfathomable. And Kira was a practicing Dylanist, whatever that was. The name had a familiar ring and the guitar that Kira cherished suggested a musical group of some sort. Well, mused Helva, she'd let it come up in conversation naturally.

The 6 days to Talitha were livened by Kira's rapid switches of mood and manner, from gamine to queen, welcome to Helva after Theoda's stolidness and as counterpoint to her painful memories of Jennan. Helva literally did not know what Kira would do next. However, when it came time to check their passengers, Kira was deftly professional and painstakingly thorough.

Dubhe, the second planet on their tour, called in to confirm a contribution of 40,000 fertilized ova, to be ready at touchdown. Kira checked computations on ETA at Dubhe, arriving at the same figure simultaneously with Helva. Child she might look, child she might play, but Kira's working mind was sharp and accurate.

The transfer at Talitha went without undue incident because Kira's acute attention to detail averted the one possible accident. An attendant, too eager to finish his assignment, tripped over the leads to a fluid tank in the now-crowded cargo hold.

Kira lit into him with a furious catalogue of his ancestors, his present worth, his future career potential, and his probable imminent demise if he repeated his awkwardness. She did so in three languages other than Basic that Helva knew and several that had the advantage of sounding ever more vicious. Yet the minute she had exhausted her choler, she turned, coolly collected, to the head of the detail with apologies.

Once lifted from Talitha, Kira shook loose the pins that held her braids and settled in the pilot's chair with a sigh of relief.

"I caught three of your descriptions of him, but the others were beyond me."

"I find that old Terran Russian, mixed with liberal neumagyarosag, is extremely vitriolic in sound," Kira said. "Actually I was only repeating a recipe for a protein dish called paprikash. It sounds much, much worse, doesn't it?" She grinned broadly at Helva, her green eyes wide.

"Effective, too. The oaf positively blanched."

"Thorn. . .." and Kira cut off her words, pressing her lips firmly together, her face, for one tiny moment, showing inner pain. "I think," she murmured, closing her eyes, "I'm hungry." Her voice was breathless, like a child's. "And," her eyes flashed open, her face composed again, "I think I shall make paprikash! Since, you realize, I have just furiously remembered the accurate recipe." She danced across the floor. "Taught me by an old gypsy." She waggled her finger at Helva. "Promise not to peek. It's a family secret."

She pivoted on her toes, round and round into the galley, laughing breathlessly as she caught the counter for support.

"Doesn't it smell heavenly?" Kira demanded of Helva, later pausing with the dish raised to Helva's column. "Be better with noodles and thick crusty bread. Hmm!" she mumbled happily over a full mouth. "Oh, perfect. I have not lost my touch." She put her fingers to her lips, releasing a kiss to the air in the extravagance of gustatory enjoyment. "Marvelous." She curled her legs under her on the wide pilot's chair and ate quickly, licking her fingers occasionally when the stew splashed.

"You make me wish I wasn't nourished by a bunch of flagons," Helva remarked. "I've never seen anyone enjoy the simple business of eating as much as you do. And you don't seem to suffer from excess calories."

Kira shrugged negligently. "Excellent metabolism. Absolutely unalterable. That's me!" That fleeting edge of bitterness crept into the gay voice.

Helva began to suspect that these sudden switches of mood were less the product of a naturally volatile spirit than the elaborate defenses of a badly hurt woman, struggling to suppress her pain by overriding all references to it.

Helva remembered how carefully the guitar case had been stowed in the closet. Not so much as a hint had Kira made that it was there, silently waiting. Was this out of deference to Helva's recent tragedy? for surely Kira knew of Jennan's death and the legends that had already begun to cling to the 834, Or was Kira avoiding the guitar for a reason of her own?

Kira had finished her meal. The dish lay on her lap. Her face was brooding, eyes fixed on a spot at the base of the control console.

Her whole attitude was apathetical and unhealthy. Helva knew she must break this mood. Kira had somehow been touched on too vital a point, despite the overtly innocuous conversation, to help herself.

Softly, without conscious choice from her wealth of musical references, Helva began to sing an old air.

"Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile; Wond'ring how your Pains were eas'd."

"How my pains are eased?" hissed Kira, her eyes great green globes glittering with hatred at the titanium column. "Do you know how my pain will be eased?" She was on her feet in such a violent upward heave that there seemed to be no intermediate motion of rising. Tall in fury, Kira frightened Helva with the sudden strength in the slight body. "In death! In DEATH!" and she held her arms straight up, wrists turned toward Helva so that she saw the thin white scars of arterial cuts. "You," and Kira's arms dropped rigid to her side. "You had the chance to die. No one could have stopped you. Why didn't you? What kept you living after he died?" the girl demanded with trenchant scorn.

Helva drew in her breath sharply, against the tantalizing memory of an anguished desire to dive into the clean white heart of Ravel's exploding sun.

"Do you realize that even if a person wants to die, it is not allowed! Not allowed." Kira began to pace wildly, graceful even in this savage mood. "No. You promptly are subjected to such deep conditioning you cannot. Anything else is permitted in our great society except the one thing you really want, if it happens to be death. Do you realize that I have not been left alone in three years? And now. . ." Kira's face was contorted in ugly anger and contempt, "now you're my nursemaid. And don't think for one moment I'm not aware you have had a confidential report on my emotional instability."

"Sit down," Helva ordered coldly and activated the final section of the mission tape with its restriction. As the import of the message reached Kira, she did sit, slumped lifeless in the pilot chair, her face drained of all emotion.

"I'm sorry, Helva. I'm really sorry." She raised trembling hands in apology. "I just didn't believe they would leave me alone at last."

"They are very good at conditioning," Helva remarked softly. "They must be and they have to be. They can't have ships or people going rogue from grief. But I think they have let you alone. They've merely made sure you can't get to those few worlds where ritual suicide is permitted, like Babam, Homan, Beid and Keid. And they can't allow you to suicide because the ethos of Central Worlds is dedicated to extending life and propagating it wherever and whenever possible. I'm a living example of the extremes to which they are willing to go to sustain a human life. The RCA is another aspect of the same ethos. For you to seek suicide means a breakdown in this ethos which cannot be permitted. Even the Pegasus and Eridani planets limit the conditions under which suicide is condoned and proscribe certain grotesque ceremonies to insure that only the most desperate attempt it.

"You'd think," Helva sighed with exasperation, "they'd figure out some way to alleviate loss, since death is the one thing the great and glorious Central Worlds hasn't been able to cure."

Kira's tumbled hair hid her face from Helva's view. Even the slim fingers were motionless. The girl had abandoned herself to grief and suddenly Helva was immeasurably irritated with this immolation in self-pity. True enough, she had been tempted to suicide, but her conditioning had held. She had keened her loss to black space, but she had lifted with Theoda to Annigoni and gone on with the business of living. Just as Theoda had after her own tragedy. As many people had, all over the universe and throughout time. When her medical advisers had realized that Kira was wallowing in sorrow, they should have applied a block. . . oh, no, not when Kira had nearly finished brawn training, Helva remembered that factor. She had been made block-resistant so the only therapy was intensive conditioning. They couldn't erase, only inhibit.

Helva looked dispassionately at her brawn, furious at her situation, realizing that Central Worlds had known exactly what they were asking of Helva when they assigned Kira to her. That, too, was part of the ethos. Use what you have that will get the job done.

"Kira, what is a Dylanist?"

The lowered head jerked up, the curtaining hair falling away from the face. The scout blinked and turned to stare at Helva's bulkhead.

"Well, that is the last question I would have expected," she said in a quiet voice. She gave a little snort of laughter and then tossed her head, shaking her hair out of her way. She looked at Helva thoughtfully, speculatively. "All right. I'll absolve you of the guilty crime of psychotherapy. Although," and Kira pointed an accusatory finger at the column, "I was coerced to make this mission and I thought it awfully suspicious you were my ship."

"Yes, that would follow logically, wouldn't it?" Helva agreed calmly.

Kira laid a slim hand on the bulkhead, on the square plate that was the only access to Helva's titanium shell within the column. It was a gesture of apology and entreaty, simple and swift. Had Helva been aware of sensory values it would have been the lightest of pressures.

"A Dylanist is a social commentator, a protester, using music as a weapon, a stimulus. A skilled Dylanist, and I wasn't one," and from the emphasis on the pronoun, Helva assumed that Kira considered her husband, Thorn, had been one such, "can make so compelling an argument with melody and words that what he wants to say becomes insinuated into the subconscious."

"Subliminal song?"

"Well, haven't you been haunted by a melody?" Kira paused at the door of her cabin.

"Hmmm, yes, I have," Helva agreed, not sure that the theme from Rovolodorus' Second Celestial Suite was exactly what Kira had in mind. Still the point was well taken.

"A really talented Dylan stylist," Kira continued, returning with the guitar case, "can create a melody with a message that everyone sings or hums, whistles, or drums in spite of himself. Why, you can even wake up in the morning with a good Dylan-styled song singing in your head. You can imagine how effective that is when you're proselytizing for a cause."

Helva roared with laughter. "No wonder you'd be considered an embarrassment to Central Worlds on the Ophiuchus circuit."

Kira's grin was impish. "I got the chapter, verse, and section on that, plus what a waste of time, talent, and ability that could be put to worthwhile use in service to C.W."

She made a face as she struck chords, sour from the instrument's long disuse. She tightened the keys, tuning up from the bass string, her expression unexpectedly tender as she worked. She struck a tentative chord, tightened the E string a fraction more, to nod satisfaction at the resulting mellow sound.

With flashing strong fingers she wove a pattern of chords and notes, drawing more volume from the instrument than its fragile structure suggested. To Helva's amazement she recognized an ancient Bach fugue just as Kira struck an angry discord, clamping both hands on the strings to keep them from resonating.

"Achh," she exclaimed, sharply flapping her hands and then clenching them into tight fists. "I haven't played since. . ." She struck a major chord, then modulated to a diminished minor. "I remember we spent one entire night. . . till noon the next day, actually. . . trying to analyze an early Dylan song. The trouble was, you weren't supposed to analyze Dylan. You had to feel him and if you tried to parse what he was saying into Basic or into psychological terms, it. . . it was meaningless. It was the total imagery of the music and the words that made the gut react. That was the whole purpose of his style. When the gut reacts the mind gets the whiplash and another chip is knocked off the solid block within."

"I'd say his work might be good therapy," Helva remarked dryly.

Kira flashed her an angry look that dissolved into a grin. She made her guitar laugh. "The trouble with therapy is you tend to find too many confusing alternative meanings to the simplest motions and words, and then you're so confused, you suspect everyone and everything." And Kira's guitar echoed the pitch of her words derisively.

A red warning light flashed on the panel simultaneously with an impulse to Helva's internal monitors. The guitar was the sole occupant of the pilot's chair and Kira was halfway down the passageway to the No. 3 hold before Helva could activate her own visual check.

Kira paused at the hold door long enough to assess the damage before she spun to the farther hold, where their additional supplies were stored.

The clumsiness of the technician had, to all scrutiny, been remedied at the time of the accident by securing the tubing in the demijohn of nutritive fluid. What had not been apparent at that time was that the closure at the other end of the line had been loosened. Sufficient of the fluid had dripped away from the weakened joint to register on the telltale. Helva anxiously checked with her magnified vision along the section of embryos serviced by that tank. There was loss at the joint, but the ribbon was still full.

Kira was back with new tubing and joints. Deftly she removed the faulty equipment, careful in her transfer to prevent air bubbles seeping in along the ribbon. Then she checked the entire length of ribbon and each minute sac under magnification to make certain there were no visible bubbles or disruption to the contact between sac top and the nutritive nipple fastening.

Then she checked the joints in the other ribbons, each line, each flask, every connection. It was a job of several hours' duration but she made no attempt to hasten the process.

Reassured, she and Helva did another check of the internal monitors before she closed the hatch.

"I should have cut him up and made him into the paprikash. That would have served him right!" Kira muttered as she disappeared into the privacy of her cabin.

Helva eavesdropped until she heard the slow, even breathing. All the while the mute guitar stared back at her from the pilot's seat, threads of that haunting melody plaguing Helva as she maintained her vigil.

At Dubhe, Kira insisted on an elaborate spectrum inspection on the disturbed ribbon to make sure none of the several thousand fetuses within the strand had suffered impairment. Whatever emotional problems tormented Kira, she held them apart from her professional life. Her objectivity was the more appreciated by Helva because she had had a glimpse of Kira's personal turmoil.

The KH-834 sped onward from Dubhe to Merak, where another 20,000 waited. On the short voyage between Dubhe and Merak, neither Kara nor Helva mentioned what Helva styled 'the paprikash' incident. Kira did not put the guitar away but spent some time every 'evening' giving Helva additional samples of Dylanist wit and social penetration, from the ancient dream songs of the Protest Decade in early Atomic history to contemporary examples.

When the call from Alioth came, it interrupted Kira's masterful rendition of a very early Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind."

Kira carefully laid aside her guitar and answered the call, her face registering polite surprise at the origin.

"Fifteen thousand?" she repeated for confirmation, and received what Helva felt was an unnecessarily curt rejoinder and cutoff.

While Kira had been dealing with the call, Helva had activated the ship's memory files for facts on the planet.

"That's odd," she remarked.

"How so?" asked Kira, jotting down eta computations.

"There's no record of their having a bank. Grim planet. In a highly unstable volcanic period. Use a lot of molten mining techniques. Highest mortality rate in the Central Worlds."

"I think," commented Kira dryly, "you'd better see what Cencom has to say about our landing there."

"It's not on the restricted list, Kira," Helva replied, but she activated the tight beam.

"Alioth?" Cencom exclaimed, surprised out of its formal voice. "The mayday didn't go out to them. We've no record of a bank there. Ethnically speaking, it's possible. Hold."

Kira cocked an eyebrow at Helva. "They're checking with I know who. Two gets you one they abort the call."

"Two gets me one of what?" jibed Helva.

"KH," Cencom returned. "Proceed to Alioth. No bank listed but traders report improvements in mining techniques indicate technological advances at proper level for race propagation. Religious hierarchy powerful, so do not antagonize. Repeat, do not antagonize. And report soonest."

"You just lost two whatever it was you bet," Helva taunted.

"Okay," Kira said with a shrug. "Filmbank have any clips?"

Helva flashed them on the viewer. The first were aspects of the small spaceport The main city was dominated by an enormous temple built against the side of an extinct volcano; the broad multiple steps leading to it reminding Helva of a ziggurat. She didn't much care for worlds with a religious hierarchy, but she was aware that her opinion was at the moment jaundiced. Too many religions were gloom and doom. Alioth, fourth planet of its solar system, was far enough out from its primary to get little of its brightness and its volcanic era predisposed it to Dantean excesses. One last scene showed a procession of torch-bearing cowled figures crossing a huge central plaza in front of the temple.

"A truly cheerless place," Kira said, making a face. "Well, with only 15,000, we can't have to stay long." She strummed a gay tune to counteract the morbid pictures.

"They are in the ethnic group required by Nekkar," Helva remarked dubiously,

"Can't see a thing with all those hoods," Kira said. "You don't suppose the embryos come complete with cowl, do you? That'd be a facer for the Nekkarese," and she giggled, adding a guitar laugh.

"You should say, born with a caul."

Kira threatened Helva with the guitar, then made her inspection of the three holds.

"This extra 15,000 will crowd us a little, with the 20,000 at Merak," Kira said as she worked.

"Alioth is spatially aligned with Nekkar. We can make it there with time to spare. Then, hoiyotoho off on another stork run."

Kira straightened, wrinkling her nose in Helva's direction.

"Hoiyotoho is utterly inappropriate to a stork run."

"For you, maybe, but not for me. I am, after all, an armored maid."

"Ha!" Kira fell silent as she peered through a magnifying lens at a joint.

When the two had finished the inspection, Kira paused at the galley, reaching absently for coffee. She wandered, moody for the first time in nearly a week, into the main cabin and plunked herself down on the pilot's chair, curling her feet under her and sitting quietly, only the vapor of the heating coffee moving.

"Stock run!" she said finally. "D'you realize, Helva, I'm the same ethnic group, too? Those pieces of life are the children of people like me. Only unlike me. Because they have left seed and I have none."

"Don't be ridiculous," Helva snapped, hoping to ward off a Kiran explosion. "You made your RCA duty when you reached your majority, didn't you?"

"No," Kira snapped back. "No. I didn't. I had met Thorn by then and I was going to have all my children. I didn't need any agency to insure the propagation of those chromosomes that are essentially Kira Faleraova Mirsky of Canopus. As a matter of fact," she said sardonically, "I even wrote a Dylan on the RCA, full of wit and drollery, with candid cracks about the uncanned child."

She swung the chair around to face Helva, her eyes narrowed in self-contempt.

"One of the many items my so-censored biograph left out was that my only child died a-borning, from his mother's womb untimely ripped, ripping it and rendering her completely barren."

Kira spanned her tiny hips with slender hands. "No life in these loins, ever. . . not implanted nor impregnated. No nothing of Thorn or all we had together. That," and she snapped her fingers, "for our supreme egotistical self-assurance."

It was for such accidents that the RCA recommended seed donations from every young adult. It was pointless to remind Kira of this. She was all too patently aware of her folly.

"That's why I returned to medicine after Thorn's death rather than the Service. But all my studies proved that there was no rebirth in me nor birth for me. Science can do many wonders, make many adjustments, but not that."

She sighed heavily but her bitterness was not as frantic as that first explosion. Helva wondered if Kira had resigned herself to barrenness as she had not, from appearances, resigned herself to living.

"Which is why, dear Helva, it is ironic for me, of all people, to be assisting this particular cargo around the Great Wheel."

Helva refrained from any remarks. Kira finished her coffee and retired to rest. Within a few hours there would be Merak to deal with, then on to Alioth.

They cleared Merak in record time, the technicians being both quick and careful. Alioth was only a few days onward before the last spatial hop to Nekkar. Scout and ship had now achieved a pleasant routine in which Helva filled gaps in her classical and ancient musical repertoire with Kira's comprehensive acquaintance with folk music from old Terra and the early colonial periods of the now major worlds.

Helva woke Kira just before touchdown on Alioth. The scout dressed quickly in a somber tunic, braiding her hair so closely to her scalp Helva wondered her head didn't ache.

Touchdown was not auspicious. To begin with, the spaceport was overshadowed by the jagged, glowing peaks of Alioth's active continental spine. They were told to touch down some distance from the small rectangular building that housed what spaceport control and administration the inhospitable planet required. Kira protested they were too far from the building to effect a quick transfer and was brusquely informed she was to await the arrival of a ground vehicle. It took its time in arriving, a huge transport truck loaded with cowled figures who took positions around Helva's base, elbow to elbow. Their belligerent attitude and presence seemed an insult to a ship bearing Helva's markings.

"What is the meaning of mounting a guard on a Scout Ship in Central Worlds Medical Service?" Kira demanded in firm tones to the control tower.

"For the protection of your cargo."

At this moment the charge officer of the guard contingent requested permission to enter the scout ship.

"Well?" Helva asked softly of Kira.

"I don't see we have much choice but I suggest you tape this and tight beam it back to Regulus."

"My thought, too," Helva agreed. "And I think I'll play silent."

"A good idea," Kira said, adjusting a contact button on her cloak.

There were many backward planets where the partnership of the mobile brawn scout and his brain ship were improperly understood. On such worlds it often had been to the advantage of the partners to keep the brain's abilities unknown until needed, if needed. The button would allow Helva to keep in sight and sound contact with Kira.

The officer, an ominous, tall figure in his black cowl, appeared at the airlock, which Helva opened. The man, his face unseen, towered above Kira. A thin hand was extruded from the draperies and made a gesture toward breast and hidden face that could be interpreted as a salute of sorts.

Kira responded in kind, waiting for him to speak first.

"Second Watch officer Noneth," he finally intoned.

"Medical Scout Kira of Canopus," Kira replied with dignity. Helva did not fail to note that the girl clung to her planetary designation, rather than a ship-partner identity as KH-834.

"Your presence is required at High Temple to discuss the donation," Noneth said in hollow, measured tones.

"Time is of the essence in a transfer of this nature," Kira began smoothly.

"Time," intoned the officer, "is at the disposal of Him Who Orders. It is at his command you are to come."

"The seed is ready for shipment?" Kira asked, insistent on some information.

A shudder rippled the fabric surrounding the figure of Noneth.

"Do not blaspheme."

"Unintentional, I assure you," Kira said, calmly refusing to offer further apology.

"Come," ordered the officer in a voice of command that crackled with authority.

"He Who Orders bids you come, woman," a sepulchral, harsh voice echoed shrilly through the tiny cabin.

Kira won another mark of respect from Helva when she gave no indication of surprise at that awesome bellow. The scout's eyes flicked briefly over the smooth oval fastening on Noneth's hood. Helva as well as Kira recognized the device for what it was, a two-way control similar to the one Kira wore. A type issued only to Service personnel.

There'd be a nova of a scandal when Central Worlds discovered who was distributing these restricted designs on backward planets.

"The order must be obeyed. The Temple itself has spoken," Noneth cried in a voice quavering with reverence. "Dally not."

The Temple was feminine, Helva realized, having appraised the timbre of the voice.

"I am under orders," Kira said evasively.

"That is the Eternal Truth," Noneth replied, nodding solemn accord, as Kira apparently responded in a manner consonant with his religion. He raised his hand in a stylized gesture and added, "May Death come to you at the moment of your triumph."

Kira, about to make a graceful obeisance, halted and stared up at the hidden face, her eyes wide with shock.

"May Death come to you at the moment of your triumph?" she murmured. The blood drained from her face.

"Is not Death the greatest of blessings?" asked the priest, mildly surprised at her ignorance.

It was all Helva could do to remain silent but a deep instinct stifled her half-formed groan of protest. It took little extra interpolation to surmise that death on Alioth would be the greatest of blessings: relief from the terrible drudgery, the grim and gloomy aspect of the planet, with its hovering, smoking mountains. The normal perils of molten mining plus the daily anxiety of a volcano emerging and erupting underfoot had emphasized the brevity of existence until the emphasis had swung toward death as a welcome respite from grinding toil and miserable conditions. Was Cencom out of its alleged mind when it did not ban Kira from landing on Alioth, knowing her compulsion? She wouldn't even have to strain against her conditioning.

"Yes, Death is the greatest of blessings. That is Eternal Truth," Kira repeated, trancelike.

"Come with me," Noneth enjoined, gently persuasive, his gaunt hand beckoning to Kira. "Come," echoed the sepulchral voice greedily.

The ground car had no sooner left the base of the KH-834 than the guard began to move.

"She will see Him Who Orders," one sighed enviously. "The bareface harlot will be given an unjust reward. Now! Up the lift and let us secure the cargo. Think of it! Thousands more to die to expiate the sin against Him Who Orders."

That was sufficient for Helva. She locked the lift controls and slid the airlock securely tight. Curse, hammer, buffet though those Aliothites might, Helva was invulnerable against such weapons as Alioth's technology possessed. She activated the tight beam to Cencom. Alioth would rue the day its religious hierarchy decided to hijack the cargo of a Service ship, much less kidnap its brawn.

Dispassionately Helva took account of the matter of Kira's departure. The girl had, in the extremes of grief, sought death. But Helva doubted Kira would betray her service. For one thing, she couldn't, although the Aliothites didn't realize the ship was capable of independent thought and action. Having enticed the brawn away, they assumed the ship was grounded, impotent, and they could take their time forcing Kira to accede to their designs on the embryos.

I could just leave, Helva thought. If death is the reward these zealots seek, then I don't need to have any compunctions about burning the guard detail to its due merits. But I cannot leave Kira. Not yet. I have time. What was the matter with Cencom? They were never around when you needed them! And why in the name of little apples did they permit Kira to land on a death-dedicated planet? You idiot, Helva told herself, because they didn't know that's the way the religion turned.

The ground rumbled beneath her. Far to the north a fireball zoomed heavenward, bursting in a shower of lighted fragments. Other fireworks followed, as well as more ominous movement beneath Helva's tailfins. She held herself ready for an instant liftoff if her balance was shaken beyond the normal recovery in her stabilizers. Somewhere to the northeast, another volcano answered the eruption of the first.

Helva saw the ground car carrying Kira reach the central building and she muttered ineffective mental commands for Kira to snap out of her trance and switch on the contact button.

The guard, impervious to the massed eruptions, went right on trying to force the lift mechanism. Their cowls kept falling from their faces and they kept replacing them as if a bare face were indecent. The red light from the fireballs that continued to light the sky illuminated gaunt, ascetic faces, dirty with ingrained volcanic dusts, dulleyed from improper nutrition and continual fatigue.

Klra alighted from the transport and, flanked by guards, was escorted to a smaller vehicle that disappeared from Helva's augmented vision into the complex of city buildings. The transport turned back to the field and Helva.

An enterprising guard urged his fellows to bring a gantry rig against the ship. Slowly and with much effort, they wheeled the cumbersome frame from a far side of the field.

Helva watched the performance with grim amusement. Their own fault for insisting we set down so far from the facilities of the port. Perhaps they couldn't see in the gloom of Alioth's perpetual twilight that the lock was closed tight, too.

She tried to rouse Cencom on the tight beam, cursing at that delay because she was so worried about not reaching Kira on the contact.

"Contact button," she muttered to herself, recalling the anomalous appearance of one on Noneth's hood. Now, if it were a Service issue or a true imitation, she ought to be able to use it. That Temple female had utilized one to second Noneth's commands to Kira.

Helva wasted no time in throwing open the wide-wave on the contact band. As hastily, she closed it, dazed with the resultant chaotic kaleidoscope of sight and sound that besieged her. Mentally reeling from the impact on her senses, she wondered painfully how she had managed to get several hundred thousand contacts at once. Quickly she scanned the scurrying guards, still trying to wrestle the gantry frame to her. Each one had a button securing his hood at the neck.

"Great glittering galaxies," moaned Helva. "This religion must be composed of schizoids to deal with that kind of chaos."

Holding tightly to her sanity, Helva opened the band a fraction, wincing at the confusion of sound and sight. She tried to focus in on one contact alone but felt herself drowning in the myriad pictures that returned. It was like trying to focus on a pinpoint through the faceting of a fly's eyeball.

Grimly she refined vision to one small area, forcing herself to accept only one of the conflicting and overlapping images that returned to her. She cut out the sound completely. Fortunately every wearer in the selected segment was converging on one location, crossing a huge plaza, crowded with gyrating, swaying cowled figures, their robes flapping around them as they approached the wide deep steps that led up the side of the dead volcano. This was the ziggurat Helva had noticed in the tape clip.

Suddenly everything and every figure tilted. It took Helva a moment to realize she too was rocking with earthquake as three more volcanoes spewed out their guts skyward. She waited, alert, lest the instability of the spaceport field became too critical for her to remain planet-bound!

An ecstatic, moaning roar wafted through the air, now hazy as the earth's minute shifts released gases from narrow fissures in the floor of the plaza. Helva, already confused, did not at first catch the significance of the gas or the fact that the ululation was reaching her ship's outer ears, not issuing from the dumb contact circuits.

Helva increased power in the tight beam, desperately trying to raise Cencom over the volcanic interferences.

Simultaneously she cut in the narrow contact, anxious not to lose Kira. Everyone in the plaza was now waving arms aloft, hoods thrown back from joyful faces raised to the spark-filled, gas-fogged skies. Then the Aliothites wheeled, ducking their heads to breathe deeply of the rising gas fumes. Incredulous, Helva watched, as more and more people pushed and crowded around the fissures; inhaling deeply, staggering away; faces rapt, arms aloft, movements erratic. Then Helva realized that the gases were either hallucinogenic or euphoric, doubly dangerous at a time of mass volcanic eruptions. Yet the exposed open plaza was rapidly filling with bodies either already intoxicated or frantically trying to be.

The significance of gas eruptions in the plaza before the Temple of this demoniac religion was not lost on Helva. Obviously, this effect was known and calculated by the temple hierarchy. Helva was revolted and enraged by such depravity and she redoubled her efforts to locate Kira and her escort. They would have to leave the vehicle and enter the plaza on the south side. One multi-exposed group caught her searching eyes. There couldn't be two such slender hoodless figures on this mad planet. Kira was just entering the plaza, her inexorable progress toward the ziggurat steps impeded by the jerking, jolting freak-inebriates.

Fully alarmed, Helva widened the band, trying to skip from contact to contact, forward toward Kira. The effect was maddening, like seeing thousands of film tapes all interlocking fuzzily, playing on the same master screen. For the first time in her life, Helva felt vertigo and nausea. Her sense of impending disaster deepened as she tried to reach Kira before she entered the Temple of Death. Placed as it was on the top of the massive ziggurat, right next to the old volcano, it must be heavy with the hallucinogenic gases. Helva thanked the Service for the small blessing that Kira had been desensitized to such hazards as hallucinogens, but the girl was as immobile in her trance as if she were susceptible.

Helva groaned at her inability to reach Kira, spiritually or physically.

"Ooooh," an answering groan rose from the multitude. "The Temple weeps," the garbled cry went up from a thousand throats. Even the guards at the spaceport, wrestling with the gantry frame, echoed the chant.

"Oh," Helva gasped. Her surmise that she was broadcasting to all the Aliothites, was confirmed as this new exclamation was repeated by the crowd. She had been mistaken for the voice of their Temple female.

Oblivious to the multi-vision, Helva stared at the cylindrical top of the Temple and recognized what she had not consciously identified before. The cylinder was a ship on its long axis, nose and fins buried in the lava of the old eruption. The Temple entrance was nothing more than an airlock, and by the entrance, Helva could trace the faintly visible designation of a Central Worlds brain ship.

As clear as the day she had heard it, the day Jennan had died, Helva recalled what Silvia had told her about another grief-stricken ship. This had to be the 732. And what better place to mourn than a red-dark violent world, so conducive to the immolation of grief? Or had the 732 aimed at the fiery maw of the erupting volcano and somehow been deflected from the seething cone at the last moment, lodged immovably in the lava-flow at its base? Had the 732 turned her tortured mind on the grim world and urged thousands to die in expiation for the death of her beloved?

The requirements of duty were suddenly lucid to Helva and the plans to discharge it sprang to mind. With the genius of sheer desperation, Helva began to sing, her voice a deep, caressing baritone, coloring her resonances with minor-keyed longing, suspending reason to the dictates of sheer instinct.

"Death is mine, mine forever," she intoned, repeating the phrase a third above as the responsive Aliothites chanted the first phrase in obedient mimicry. It was like having an incredibly well-rehearsed world-chorus at your disposal. Helva exploited the phenomenon ruthlessly.

"Sleep I cannot, rest eludes me." And down a fifth "Dreams to plague me, tortured I."

Up to an augmented seventh as the chorus chimed in on a dissonance, calculated to raise inner hackles and pierce the gut with longing.

"Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die."

Helva sang, her voice sliding into the edged timbre of a harsh, yearning tenor. Down again to the original musical phrase, but this time the baritone quality was tinged with scorn.

"Death is mine, mine forever. Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die."

The last word became a vibrant crescendo of derision, diminishing to a mocking whisper long after the supporting chorus had completed its cry on the augmented seventh.

"Cencom calling KH-834, will you acknowledge? ACKNOWLEDGE!" the hard official voice of Regulus Base Cencom broke through Helva's fantastic musical improvisation.

"Mayday, mayday," Helva replied in a jolting soprano on both tight beam and the Aliothite contact band. The chorus obediently shrilled out the resounding emergency challenge. Helva caught her breath as she saw Kira stagger with instinctive reaction to the cry.

"Mayday?" Cencom demanded. "You sent with a crafty fool Dylanizing on Alioth?"

With a shock, Helva realized that was exactly what she was doing, Dylanizing. Her appeal to Kira, though couched musically, the one medium with which she could hope to reach the entranced scout, had crystallized further into the subliminal form of a Dylanesque protest. Exultant, she knew how to manipulate this to her own ends. With a barely perceptible increase in tempo, she repeated her first phrase, no longer a longing legato, but a mocking staccato. As the chorus responded idiotically true to its model, she hurriedly reported to Cencom.

"Alioth's religious head is the rogue ship 732; the religious motivation is death!"

"The brawn, where is your brawn?" Cencom crackled.

"What is the release word for the 732?" Helva hissed, then chanted the second phrase of her Dylan, again picking up the tempo so that the beat as well as the sound had urgency to it.

"Report!" Cencom demanded.

"I don't have time to report, you nardy fool. The release word!" Helva snarled. She jumped her voice an octave and a half, switching registers to helden-tenor, her phrase ringing through the plaza in an arrow of sheer emotion, packed sound to pierce the trance of her scout.

Kira's guards were lurching now, half-dazed by the treacherous fumes that filled the plaza. They had Kira by the arms, and Helva, trapped in the background of the mighty chorus, couldn't tell whether they were restraining Kira or hanging onto her for support. The girl alone was unaffected by the hallucinogen.

"Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die!"

Helva's tenor rang, scornfully, lashing viciously at Kira's deathwish.

"You fool," Cencom said. "She wants to die!"

"GIVE ME THE RELEASE WORD!" Helva cried at the tight beam in a strident soprano, then projected her voice, bitterly powerful, angrily compelling, thundering the protest:

"Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die!"

The phrase echoed tauntingly through the plaza. The chorus, unable to imitate the incredible pitch of Helva's voice, dropped to the lower octave. The challenge rocked back across the plaza, punctuated by the massive thunder of erupting volcanoes.

With a sudden, soundless, soul-shattering wrench, the massed glimpses of chaos dissolved and Helva was suddenly of single sight, Kira!, in a darkly curtained chamber, unevenly lit by red braziers. Increasing her dark vision, Helva penetrated the gloom, her attention focused on the hideous object that dominated the room.

On a raised, black basaltic slab lay the decomposing remains of what had once been a man. The teeth were bared whitely through the decayed flesh in a travesty of a smile. The tendons of the neck were stark ridges and the cartilage of his esophagus ended in the indestructible fabric of a scout coverall. His hands, crossed on the chest cavity crumpled by a massive fatal blow, were linked by the intertwined overgrowth of fingernail. The 732's dead brawn lay in state.

And Helva was seeing him through Kira's contact button. . . at last.

A wailing chant filled the chamber, a meaningless, mournful dribble of sound, emanating from the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The mad brain encased in its indestructible titanium shell, had all circuits open, keening, oblivious to everything.

In as soundless a whisper as she could broadcast, Helva muttered swiftly to Kara. "It's the rogue 732. It's gone mad. It's got to be destroyed." It was easier, somehow for Helva, knowing what she must do, to think of the 732 as an impersonal 'it', rather than the female the brain had once been.

Kira swayed, making no reply.

For one paralyzing demisecond, Helva wondered if the girl had inadvertently opened the contact, if Kira were still in the thrall of the powerful death wish. Had Helva's Dylan protest pierced Kira's self-destructive trance with its mockery? Had Helva succeeded in jolting her brawn to sanity? The release word would be no mortal use if she did not have her mobile brawn's cooperation to immobilize the rogue.

With slow steps Kira approached the bier and its ghastly occupant. The keening grew louder, the mumbling became articulated.

"He has been taken. He Who Orders has been taken," chanted the 732 and the crowd echoed the chant as readily as they had Helva's. "He is gone. Seber is gone."

Not helpless again? Helva cried, silently, her mind overwhelmed by hopelessness.

Eerily another sound was superimposed over the 732's wail.

"Now that dwarf presents a definite problem, Lia," the wowwing, muffled words could barely be distinguished. "I wouldn't be surprised. . ."

It was a man's voice, Helva realized, played back at a lagging speed which distorted the words into a yawing parody. The ship was broadcasting, had broadcast this tape so many times that the sound of Seber's taped voice was as decayed as his corpse on the bier.

Kira continued to sway in her graceful circumnavigation.

"Speak, O Seber, in singing tones that thy servant, Kira, may hear the music of thy beloved voice," Kira crooned, making an obeisance to the column behind which lay the shell of the mad 732.

Helva barely managed to suppress the cry of intolerable relief at the cues Kira was feeding her.

"CENCOM, THE RELEASE WORD!" Helva pleaded on the tight beam just as the 732's crooning broke off abruptly. Helva could almost feel the ship's held breath.

Delay! Delay! Where was Cencom!

"Lia, the interference on my contact is incredible. Can't you clear up the relays? That dwarf is wreaking havoc. . ."

Even Kira jumped involuntarily as Helva, deepening her voice to a baritone approximation of Seber's, ad libbed frantically.

"Can't seem to read you clearly. Lia? Lia? You got wires crossed?"

"Seber? Seber?" shrieked the rogue ship, her voice wild with incredulous hope. "I'm trapped. I'm trapped. I was thrown off course when the edge of the volcano blew. I tried to die. I tried to die, too."

Kira was fumbling with the draperies at the bulkhead. Her escort, roused from their euphoria as they sensed sacrilege, dove toward Kira. Her swift hand caught one on the voice box in a deadly chop. She ducked under the other man, using her body to throw him against the bier so squarely that his head cracked ominously against the stone and he slumped down.

"KH, the release is na-thom-te-ah-ro, watch the pitch!"

And Helva, knowing she was in effect executing one of her own kind, broadcast the release word to the 732. As the syllables with their pitched nuances activated the release of the access panel, Kira caught the plate, reached in deftly and threw the valve that would flood the inside of the shell with anesthesia.

"I can't see you, Seber. Where are. . ." and the 732's despairing wail was stilled in longed for oblivion.

Kira whirled, the panel clinking behind the concealing draperies as cowled figures lurched into the main cabin from the quarters behind.

"Hold!" Helva commanded in Lia's voice. "He Who Orders has decided. Take the barefaced woman back to the ship. Such blasphemous seed is not for the chosen of Alioth."

Kira, again trancelike, followed the dazed hoods back down the steps.

"Helva, what in the fardles is happening there?" Cencom demanded within the 834.

"He has decided," the fanatical mob in the plaza groaned and swayed in the thrall of the hallucinogenic fumes.

"Helva!" snapped Cencom.

"Oh, shut up all of you," said Helva, near a breaking point.

"He has ordered. That is Eternal Truth."

She watched just long enough to be sure that the reeling, freak-drunk Aliothites would not interfere with Kira's return. How they could, Helva couldn't imagine, for they were dropping by the hundreds, exhausted by fumes and frenzy.

"You better have a good explanation for deliberately abrogating specific restrictions in your journey tape regarding Dylanistic. . ."

"I'll Dylanize you, you fatuous oaf," Helva cut in angrily. "The end justifies the means, and might I remind you that for some reason, unknown forever to God and man, your list of restricted planets did NOT include Alioth, as by the fingernails of that God they should have!"

Cencom sputtered indignantly.

"Control yourself," Helva suggested acidly. "I found your long-lost rogue and I have killed her. And I did some rough but effective therapy on your precious Kira of Canopus. What more do you want of one brain shell? Huh?"

Cencom maintained silence for 60 stunned seconds.

"Where is Kira?" and Helva could swear Cencom sounded contrite.

"She's all right."

"Put her on."

"She's all right!" Helva repeated with weary emphasis. "She's on her way back from the Temple."

The spaceport rocked under a multiple eruption just as the vehicle bearing Kira screeched to a halt at the lift. Helva unlocked the mechanism and Kira leaped on before the guards came to their senses. The ground danced under the ship's stabilizers and, as Kira dove from airlock to pilot's couch, Helva slammed the lock shut and precipitously lifted from grim Alioth,

In the tail scanners they saw the guards retreating to safety as the gantry tumbled leisurely down. Bright jewels dotted the receding planet as it gave them a volcanic sendoff.

"Scout Kira of the KH-834 reporting," the slender girl said crisply to Cencom, shedding her cloak. Helva half-expected a shower of hairpins to follow but Kira remained tautly erect before the tight beam. She gave a terse report, demanding to know why traders had not reported the presence of Service-type contact buttons plainly visible on every Aliothite. And why, a far more criminal omission, the hallucinogenic gas eruptions had not been reported.

"Hallucinogenic gas?" Cencom echoed weakly. Such instances were the nightmare of colonization; entire populations could be subjected to illegal domination by such emissions, as indeed had happened on Alioth.

"I recommend strongly that all traders dealing with Alioth in the last 50 years be questioned as to their motives in suppressing such information from Central Worlds. And discover who was the semi-intelligent CW representative who cleared this freak-off planet for colonization."

Cencom was reduced to incoherent sputters.

"Stop gargling," Kira suggested sweetly, "and order an all-haste planet-therapy team here. You've got an entire society to reorient to the business of living. We'll file a comprehensive report from Nekkar, but now I've got to inspect our children. That was a rough take-off. Over and out." And Kira closed the tight beam down.

With a fluid motion she propelled herself to the kitchen, shaking her braids free and massaging her scalp with rough fingers.

"My head is pounding!" she exclaimed, reaching for coffee. "That gas was unbelievably malodorous." She leaned wearily against the counter, her shoulders sagging in fatigue.

Helva waited, knowing Kira was sorting her thoughts.

"The closer I got to that temple, the deeper the terrible miasma of grief. It was almost visible, Helva," she said, and then added scathingly, "and I wallowed in it. Until that Dylan of yours reached me, Helva."

Her eyes widened respectfully. "The hair on the back of my neck stood up straight. That final chord got me, right here," she groaned, jabbing at her abdomen with a graphic fist. "Thorn would have given his guts to compose such a powerful Dylan." Her shoulders jerked spasmodically in a violent muscle spasm.

"That awful corpse!" She closed her eyes and shuddered, shaking her head sharply to rid herself of the effect. "I think. . ." she murmured, her eyes narrowing with self-appraisal, "I have been thinking, I had done the same thing to Thorn."

"I think perhaps you had," Helva agreed softly.

Kira sipped at her coffee, her face tired but alive, the mask of vivacity replaced by an inner calm. "I have been so stupid," she said with trenchant self-contempt.

"Not even Cencom is infallible," Helva drawled.

Kira threw back her head in a whoop of laughter.

"That's Eternal Truth!" she crowed, dancing back into the main cabin.

Helva watched the victory dance, immeasurably pleased with the outcome of the affair as far as Kira was concerned. She could not regret that she had had to kill one of her own peers. Lia had really died years before with her scout. That tortured remnant had peace at last, and so had Kira. She and Helva would continue together on their stork run, picking up the seeds from. . .

Helva let out a yip of exultation. Kira stared at her, startled. "What hit you?"

"It's so ridiculously simple I can't imagine someone never suggested it to you. Or maybe they did and you rejected it."

"I'll never know unless you tell me what it is," Kira replied caustically.

"One of the facets of your grief psychosis. . ."

"I'm over it now," Kira interrupted Helva, her eyes flashing angrily.

"Ha to that. One of the facets has been the lack of progeny from your seed and Thorn's? Right?"

The scout's face turned starkly white, but Helva plunged on.

"Neither one of your parents was stupid enough to have ignored their RCA duty. Right? So their seed is on file. Take some of your mother's and his father's and. . ."

Kira's eyes widened and her jaw dropped, her face lighting with incredulous radiance. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Delicately she stretched out her hand, touching the access panel softly.

Helva was ridiculously, embarrassingly delighted at her acceptance of the idea. Then Kira drew her breath in sharply, her face concerned.

"But for you. . . wouldn't you take your mother's and. . ."

"No," Helva said sharply, then added more gently, "that won't be necessary." She knew in mind and heart now that the resolution of grief is highly individual, that both she and Kira had reached it by different means, just as Theoda had.

Kira looked unaccountably stricken, as if she had no right to take the solution Helva offered if Helva did not, too.

"After all," the ship chuckled, "there aren't many women," and Helva used the word proudly, knowing that she had passed as surely from girlhood to woman's estate as any of her mobile sisters, "who give birth to 110,000 babies at one time."

Kira dissolved into laughter, crowing with delight over Helva's analogy. She snatched up her guitar, strumming a loud introductory arpeggio. Then the two, ship and scout, surprised the stars with a swinging Schubert serenade as they sped toward Nekkar and deliverance.