The Ship Who Sang

The Ship Who Dissembled

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hypothetical. . ."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The request was issued properly," Teron repeated.

"Shouldn't we consult Central first?"

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

"Oh really?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two households, both alike in dignity. . .

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

Fly, I cannot see. Fly?

The qualify of mercy is not strained. . .

It droppeth as the gentle rain from. . .

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

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

There once was a bishop from Chichester

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

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

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

Howlonghowlonghowlonghowlong? HOW LONG?

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

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

SOUND

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

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

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

"You have been disconnected from your ship function."

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

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

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

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

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

"Cooperation?" Helva asked, confused.

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

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

"Mad?" and her tormentor laughed obscenely.

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

A finger dominated her lens like a suspended projectile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Xixon turned, frowning at the interruption.

"Well?"

"The cargo of the 834 contained no Menkalite."

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

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

"Speak up," he screamed at her.

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

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

"I don't know."

"Speak up."

"I feel that I am shouting already."

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

"Is this better?"

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

"I don't know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He sat up straight, his eyes flashing with anticipation.

"You can reticulate the mating croons?"

"Of course," she replied with mild surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tagi, can you hear me?"

"Yes." A flat, mechanical affirmative.

"Merl, can you hear me?"

"You're loud."

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

Revenge on an inert husk was illogical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But mine are hooked up?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It took 'em long enough."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To err is human."

"Thank God!"

Just then Teron requested permission to board.

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

"Don't go, Parollan. . ."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mishap?"

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

"I can't expect what?"

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

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

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

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

"What has possessed you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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