Chaining the Lady

1. Melody of Mintaka

*occasion for preparatory briefing*

—summon council governing sphere representatives linked thought transfer immediate—

COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATING * — / :: ^o_o

—welcome ast, slash, quadpoint, duocirc—

:: shall we dispense with the superfluities? we have a galaxy to conquer ::

—you certainly bore into the subject, quadpoint—

:: your humor is flighty, as befits avian nature what is the state of reduction? ::

—infiltration of all ten major segments of galaxy milky way has been accomplished in each case concentration has been on war fleets and capital planets—

^o_o ratios? ^o_o

—400 agents per segment fleet, 100 agents per capital planet total 5000 transfer agents in galaxy all we can manage on present energy budget—

/also present limitation on kirlian resources/

—true effort should suffice, as subject galaxy remains unaware of infiltration no apparent reason to alter schedule of overt action—

*seek concurrence for unrevised schedule*

— / :: ^o_o CONCURRENCE ^o_o :: / —

:: no other business? ::

—none at present—

*POWER*

— / :: ^o_o CIVILIZATION ^o_o :: / —

Melody shuffled the deck by emitting dissonance at the mechanism. This could not be entirely random, but of course that was the point. While she controlled the arrangement of the cards, she was not supposed to be consciously aware of the details.

She touched the finished deck with the tip of one whip, activating it. Its music sprang up, setting her instruments to playing sympathetically.

It was the Queen of Energy that manifested—in an unfamiliar aspect. The Queen carried the familiar Wand, rendered as a scepter for this royal impersonation, that denoted her suit; the established symbols of the Tarot deck were older than the organized concept that was the deck. The Queen was naked, standing on a waveswept ledge, her appendages manacled to a huge stone. And she was Solarian—or more bluntly, human.

Now of course every card had a theoretic potential of 144 aspects. The Queen of Energy had faces showing ” Queens ” of every sapient species in the Milky Way galaxy. But no physical deck contained all aspects of all faces; that would amount to 14,400 presentations in all, an unwieldy number. So the normal pack of the Cluster Tarot contained a representative sampling of each card. Melody had not been aware that a Solarian course had been included in this deck. Which only meant she had not been paying proper attention when she obtained it recently. She was getting old.

Well, this was her card for the day. She contemplated it, evoking the tapestry of tunes dictated by its impressed symbology. A human woman, wearing the rare-metal crown of royalty, with the luxuriant mane flowing from her head—Solarians were one of the species that had heads—and with the two great milk-mammaries of her kind. By human standards, a female on the verge of impregnation.

This was a notable concept in itself, well worth consideration. Solarians did not bud, they birthed; and the female was always the birther. She remained female for life, no matter how many times she birthed. Surely, she was chained!

In the distance of the scene was a ferocious sea monster, one of the subsapient creatures of Sphere Sol. It was obviously coming to devour the Queen, whose generous deposits of avoirdupois were surely delectable.

But what relevance did this have to her, Melody, an old Mintakan neuter entity without head or mammaries or fat? What was the Tarot trying to say to her?

Well, the five suits of the standard cluster deck represented five or more sapient species—those that had figured most prominently in the local formation of the galactic coalition, who had been the nucleus of this segment some 120 years before, at the time of the hero Flint of Outworld, Melody’s ancestor. A thousand Solarian years, since those were pitifully brief. The Suit of Energy, symbolized by the sprouting, flaming Wand, was generally identified with the massed species of Galaxy Andromeda, because of their attempted theft of the binding energies of the Milky Way galaxy that had precipitated the first crisis of civilization. Yet no Andromedan species was represented in this card of Tarot. More locally, Sphere Canopus was a Scepter culture, but this card was not that, either. There was a humanoid species in that Sphere, but it was slave. The chains of the lady—indicative of slavery? Doubtful; normally this Queen was not chained. Rather she was arrogantly free, imperious, fiery. And this one was not humanoid, but human, definitely Solarian, itself a pretty arrogant species, by no means slave. A chained Solarian was doubly significant, surely.

The Solarians were the reputed originators of the Tarot. Versions of the Tarot had been extant on their home planet for several Solarian centuries before the human colonization of space and formation of Sphere Sol. The Cluster deck itself was thought to be the creation of one of their males, the scholar called Companion Paul, or Sibling Paul, or Brother Paul. There was obscurity about his status, rooted in the human mode of reproduction. Some said there could be several offspring of a single human reproductive unit, called siblings, while others said humans sometimes called each other “Brother” when in fact they were not closely related. Only the Solarians knew for sure! At any rate, the attribution of this deck to this Paul of Earth had to be a fond exaggeration; many of the significant aspects of that deck were unknown to Solarians at the time he had lived. The entire matter of the Energy War dated fifty Mintakan years after Paul, for example—that was four hundred Solarian years—she really ought to get used to thinking in those trifling units, because they had become the standard for Segment Etamin, but the habits of an old neuter changed slowly—still, the nucleus of Tarot concept had certainly been Solarian, and the Temple of Tarot had spread rapidly from Sol to the other Spheres. Melody had suffered an apprenticeship at the Tarot Temple nearest her once, but had not been satisfied with their doctrine and had gone her own way for most of her life.

Her phone sounded. Melody activated it with a single clap of one foot, her strings vibrating dissonantly because of the irritation caused by the interruption of her morning meditation.

“Imperial Outworld of Segment Etamin summons Melody of Planet Counterpoint, Sphere Mintaka, for immediate presentation via Transfer,” the instrument played.

Melody emitted a musical snort and broke the connection. “These practical jokers never give up,” she played. A female her age just had to be the subject of a certain amount of ridicule. Blat!

Then she remembered the card. A chained Solarian female—her key for the day. Could that relate to this call?

She considered the card again. A human woman, chained in the Andromedan suit. Who had chained that lady, and why? What could it have to do with herself, an entity of quite a different situation? The Tarot was always relevant, but at times she had a great deal of difficulty ascertaining that relevance.

Well, she would have to come at it the hard way, by going back to basics. She was a sapient entity of Sphere Mintaka, itself a unit of Segment Etamin of the Milky Way galaxy. Each Sphere was a number of parsecs in diameter, embracing a hundred or more inhabited worlds, the most advanced ones being near the center. Her own planet, Counterpoint, was in the midrange of a large Sphere; it possessed atomic science but not much more. It was a suburban world, where wealthy administrators liked to retire. Toward the Fringe things became progressively more primitive, until a hundred parsecs from Star Mintaka the worlds were essentially rural. This was Spherical regression, that occurred in all Spheres, and could be abated only by the infusion of energy. But there was not enough energy; the Ethic of Energy had already spawned one intergalactic war and might some century spawn another.

So the Tarot Suit of Energy related to her general situation, though she herself associated with the Suit of Aura. Since every sapient entity in the universe was similarly affected by the availability of energy, this was unlikely to have individual meaning. It had to be more specific.

Very well. The manner in which energy affected civilization was primarily in transport and communications. There were three modes of travel between the stars. The cheapest was physical travel by spaceship. Fleets traveling at half-light speed had colonized the various Spheres long ago. But it took almost a full year—how many Sol-years? Oh, yes, eight—to cover a single parsec, and no single lifetime was long enough to traverse even the smallest Sphere. Ships were sufficient to colonize worlds, but not to build an interstellar civilization. For more direct communication, mattermission was used—instant transmission of the entity, whether person or thing. But this required a horrendous amount of energy, and though it had been much employed in the past, today it was limited largely to microscopic message capsules. So in practice, the really civilizing mode was transfer—the transmission of the Kirlian aura of a sapient (i.e., intelligent entity, as opposed to sentient or merely conscious entity) to the body of another sapient. The aura reflected the complete mental being, but required relatively little energy for transmission. Even so, there were crucial limitations, such as the availability of suitable hosts; the transfer across galactic distances did require significant energy.

So energy controlled civilization, and the Suit of Energy reflected that. Some even called that suit “Civilization” but Melody considered that to be too narrow a view. Energy was more than civilization, and more than the quiescent Andromedan menace; it was a complex multi-relating phenomenon in its own right. And she still didn’t know how it pertained to her, today.

In fact, no one knew the answer to the problem of Energy, and no one ever had—except perhaps the Ancients. The Ancients had spanned two galaxies in a unified, high-level culture. Yet they had passed from the scene three million years ago, and most of their works were defunct. They were identified with the Suit of Aura, because they had to have been a super-high Kirlian species, and they had evidently possessed Kirlian science beyond anything known to modern galactics. Melody had studied what little was known about the Ancients, fascinated by them, and she identified with them so strongly that she considered her own Significator, her particular card in the Cluster Tarot deck, to be the Queen of Aura. She would give anything to solve the riddle of the Ancients!

But her card of the day was not in the Suit of Aura, though it was a Queen. It seemed to have aimed for her but missed, although the Tarot never really missed. It had a will of its own that did not cater much to the foibles of its adherents. The Queen of Energy, a chained human lady —what could it mean? This was becoming a frustrating meditation!

She moved to her sonicscope and listened to the great panoply of the stars. Each had its own faint tune within the magnificent symphony of the galaxy. Mintaka, home star of her Sphere, loud and bright and beautiful. Alnilam and Alnitac, twin brights. Rigel, blue-white beacon in the visual spectrum, hardly audible to her senses but still impressive. Red giant Betelgeuse. Oh, the marvel of her segment, her galaxy! And the foreign galaxy Andromeda, focus of Energy.

Suddenly it clicked into place. Suit of Energy—Andromeda—chained human lady—there was a connection! In the old myth-fabric of the Solarian originators of Tarot was the story of the female entity Andromeda, and it was relevant.

Andromeda was the child of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia was a beautiful woman Solarian who, in the manner of her species, tended to be arrogant and troublesome. She proclaimed that she was more lovely than the Nereids, golden-maned nymphs of the sea. This was not necessarily true, and the vanity of one obscure queen was hardly worthy of note, but the lord of the ocean, Poseidon, took umbrage. He sent a sea monster to ravage the coast of Cassiopeia’s kingdom of Ethiopia. Oh, those Solarians! Their troublesome antics assumed the status of art at times. No Mintakan would have participated in such mischief.

Desperate to abate this menace from the sea, the Ethiopians consulted another intriguing artifact of Solarian culture: the Oracle. This was a fortune-telling entity; apparently no form of Tarot existed then. The Oracle informed them that only by sacrificing Andromeda to the monster could they achieve relief. Andromeda was even more beautiful than her mother, and did indeed rival the Nereids in appearance, which was perhaps why the monster desired her as a morsel. Melody found the motives of Solarian monsters to be as opaque as those of Solarian sapients, but it was not her task to revise the myth. So they chained this innocent, beautiful lady to a great rock by the edge of the ocean, to be consumed by the monster.

As it happened, the hero Perseus happened to pass by—coincidence was not a matter of much concern to myth-makers—and when he viewed this naked girl he was overcome by the urge to impregnate her. This too was typical of Solarian males in such circumstances: the very sight of the body of a young healthy woman caused chemical and physical reactions. Her mind or personality did not seem to matter. But Perseus could not simply impregnate and leave her, despite the convenience her situation offered. Chained as she was, she could not readily have resisted him, had she been so inclined, but her offspring would not have survived consumption by the monster, and therefore the reproduction would have been incomplete. In many other species the offspring formed immediately and became independent, but Solarians for some obscure reason suffered a delay in parturition after copulation. In this instance such delay would have been most inconvenient. So Perseus accepted the alternative course. He slew the monster and made Andromeda his formal mate.

There it was: Andromeda, the chained lady of the card, awaiting her fate. In moments the monster would be upon her. The hero Perseus was not visible in this picture, but presumably he was on his way. Andromeda did not at this moment know that her fate was to be impregnation rather than consumption. How would she have chosen, had she been given the choice in advance? Suppose things became confused, and the monster impregnated her before Perseus slew her? Or were the two actions merely aspects of the same theme? A most intriguing card!

But as this was her omen for the day did it mean that some such difficulty awaited Melody herself? She did not consider the Tarot to be precognitive; it merely revealed what was in the hidden mind of the querist, the one for whom the cards were read. But sometimes the net effect was predictive. She did not relish the implication here. Would she be faced with the choice between death or impregnation, figuratively?

The door sounded. She broke off her reverie with another chord of annoyance and opened it.

Outside stood Imperial troops headed by a Mintakan officer. “One ignores the Eye of the Dragon at one’s peril,” he played.

Melody’s strings shook. That phone call had been genuine! The Dragon world of the segment had summoned her—and she had passed it off as a prank. Now she would pay the consequences.

In fact, she was about to be chained for the Dragon— of course, merely an aspect of the sea monster. The Tarot had tried to warn her. But she, mired in the complexities of its ramifications, had missed the obvious.

Was there also a Perseus on the way?

2. Yael of Dragon

*notice transfer plus 200 level kirlian aura within target galaxy*

—specific location?—

*segment etamin to imperial planet*

—probably in order agents there are on quest for leading enemy auras to be nullified or converted—

*this aura not handled by our agents*

—possible enemy action, then message the dash command of that segment to investigate—

*POWER*

—CIVILIZATION—

Melody emerged in alien form. At first she was alarmed and disgusted. This body has no music. But soon she adjusted. She would not remain in Transfer long; only long enough to find what the Imps wanted and tell them no. She could stand it for that little time.

This host did have certain compensations. Its vision was superior. In fact, she realized now that she had never before experienced true vision, only a kind of sound-augmented approximation. Touch was good, hearing fair. And it could do something she had no prior experience with: smell. Furthermore, it was young and bouncy, possessing quick reflexes and more sheer muscular power than she had imagined feasible. Why, it could even jump.

She was in an orientation cell—padded, silent, undistinctive. Just as well, for she took several tumbles getting adjusted to only two feet, and she preferred not doing this in public. This body was bilaterally symmetrical, instead of trilaterally, and it made a difference.

Set in one wall was a plate of highly reflective metal. Peering at it from an angle with her amazing twin focusing ball-shaped eyes she saw the image of part of the room. Now why would such a panel be so placed? She balanced herself on her stout legs—Solarians had to have superior balance, since in order to walk they had to hover on a single support while swinging the other about—and managed to get to the bright panel.

She saw the chained lady, lacking only the chains. The same flowing brown mane, the same huge mammaries, the same facial agony of sacrifice. Andromeda, alive!

No—it was herself. Her host-body, a Solarian female, in her natural state. Possessing all the stigmata of imminent impregnability. Since all human beings looked pretty much alike to her Mintakan mind, naturally she had taken it for the image fresh in her memory. But there did seem to be considerable resemblance.

Well, it should be possible to let the body do much of the work. She had been trying to make it operate with Mintakan reflexes; suppose she merely gave it orders and let the buried human reflexes perform?

“Across,” she murmured to herself, and was surprised to hear the host-voice speak in its own language, which she now understood. Animation of a host-body meant similar animation of the host-brain, so comprehension came readily. Transfer had solved the problem of inter-species communication. Now this body walked, smoothly, across the room.

A little practice of this sort would soon make perfect. But she didn’t want it perfect yet, so she staged another fall. She knew the cushioned floor would protect her, and she had no doubt she was being monitored. When she had full control she would be removed for her interview with the Dragon, and she needed time for proper mental orientation first.

In another wall was a small computer terminal. Good; that suggested this confinement was at least partially voluntary. When she was ready, she could tell the computer to release her or to provide her with what she felt she needed. Such as human clothing, for she did know Solarians wore clothing. It would be reasonable to dress herself, so as to avoid early impregnation by Perseus—or whatever other human male happened by. She did not intend to be reasonable, just to look reasonable. A tantrum would be insufficient if not futile. She would handle this outrage in her own time, her own way. She would not remain chained to this body long.

She crossed to the terminal, experimented until she was able to manage the finger-finesse required, and pressed a digit to the access button. A peremptory note would have been better, but when in a Sol-host, do as the Solarians do. Finger, not sound. “Bring me a good Cluster Tarot deck,” she said.

There was a pause. Would the machine deliver? If the Solarians were smart, they would have Tarot on the proscribed list. But this was not Sphere Sol, but Planet Outworld, where Tarot was not so well known. Few entities not conversant with the tool had any significant grasp of its potential. The average sapient thought it a mere game or harmless superstition—and the average Tarot adept was careful to cultivate this impression. It was the major protection afforded contemporary inter-Sphere magick—was that the proper rendering for this concept? Yes, with the ck: the fact that authoritative entities did not take it seriously, so felt no threat.

The wall-slot opened, and an object thunked down. Victory!

She reached in and picked it up. It was a sealed physical pack of cards, Solarian-style; she recognized it from her researches. She opened it and spread the cards in her two hands. It was a tri-channel, hundred-face collection; not merely a good deck, but one of the best, well illustrated with correctly aspected symbols. It would do. “Appreciation, Machine,” she said.

“Noted,” the computer voice replied. That struck her as funny, for reasons she could not immediately define, and she laughed—and that struck her as funnier yet. What appalling sounds the human body made to express its mirth; what unholy quaking of flesh!

She sat at a table she drew out of the wall, already getting acclimatized to this body and habitat. Her Mintakan body, of course, was unable to sit. She laid the cards faceup in even rows of ten. There were thirty Major Arcana or Trumps, twenty Courts, and fifty Minor Arcana or Pips. The last group consisted of five suits: Energy, Gas, Liquid, Solid, and Aura. The cards of each were numbered one through ten, with illustrations of their characteristic symbols: Wands, Swords, Cups, Disks, and Broken Atoms. Each card of the complete deck could be flexed into two alternate faces, and the Ghost Trump had fifteen flexes plus a Table of Equivalencies enabling the reader to adapt the deck to Spheres not directly represented, such as her own Mintaka. Yes, excellent!

One face of the Queen of Energy was the same chained lady that had started this off. It was different in that this one was purely visual, rather than primarily sonic, but there was no question about the kinship. She picked it up and took it to the mirror, comparing her naked host-body to the figure on the card. The similarity was amazing. Had this host been specially selected to match? Or had the Tarot been aware of this host, and somehow—no, there was the route to insanity!

She returned slowly to the table. One thing was sure: The model for the picture was sexually appealing, so as to create the necessary urge in the mind of Perseus. That suggested that her present host was an extraordinary beauty—which just might be useful.

For perhaps an hour, Solarian time, Melody contemplated her hundred-face spread. She also flexed the Ghost through all fifteen alternates, dwelling about one minute on each. Apart from the necessary activity of her fingers, she did not move; in fact she had entered a light trance.

At last she gathered up the cards, shuffled them until her host-fingers were proficient at this, then cut the deck several times and turned up one card randomly.

It was a picture of another lovely young human female, with a long, light head-mane and slender firm body, nude. But this one was not chained. She half-kneeled on a green bank beside a pool, one foot resting forward on, not in, the water. She held two pitchers from which water poured; one into the pool, the other onto the ground, where it split into five blue rivulets. There were eight stars in the blue sky above her—seven white, one yellow— and a red bird perched in a tree.

“The Star,” she murmured, “in one of the pre-Sphere renditions. Key of great hope—or great loss—its five rivulets flowing into the five suits, its smaller stars signifying the seven planets of ancient Solarian astrology, the large star sometimes called the Star of the Magi. Now why does this particular Trump manifest now?” Whatever its original meaning, the largest star actually reminded her of mighty Mintaka, center of the universe she had known so long ago as a bud. The nostalgia was suddenly so intense she had to close her human eyes and suffer its ravages without resistance. It was not merely that she was more than four hundred parsecs from it now, and in alien guise; time more than distance separated her from that stellar hope. What she had sought there had been lost in the distant youth of her lifetime, and never recovered, but even now the pain and shame could emerge from its capsule to haunt her. Her effort to shield herself from that agony had brought her to Tarot, but remarkable as that study had been, it could not make up for it. It had shown her the folly of her past, not the folly of her future.

She forced open her human eyes, staring at the card again. The Star-girl’s hair flared from her head to the level of her knees, framing her body in a luxuriant cape. In fact, it was almost like an aura, that mark of distinction that made Melody herself remarkable. But what was the use of aura, when the essence of her life had been poured out like that of the two vases of this scene? Hope and loss—how well she understood!

She dealt another card. This was a semihuman female with two pouring cups, but in this case she had a fish’s tail rather than legs, and she was pouring the liquid from one cup into the other. In the background was a section of the Milky Way galaxy, with recognizable constellations as seen from System Sol. Naturally the Solarian deck was oriented to the Solarian view. This picture had strong points of similarity, notably the girl’s full mammaries, but the symbolic meaning was quite different. “Temperance,” Melody murmured.

She dealt one more. This was yet another young woman fully clothed and holding a large disk or coin, an unit of Solarian monetary exchange. “Page of Solid, female,” Melody remarked.

She studied the three cards side by side, noting their parallels, which were impressive. Three healthy, sexually appealing young women. The Tarot was certainly trying to tell her something of importance, and this time she intended to continue her meditation until she comprehended it without undue distraction by her personal feelings. Again she moved into a trance.

Suddenly she snapped her fingers—an automatic Solarian gesture her Mintakan body could not have performed —in understanding. “Girl, stand forward,” she said.

And inside her brain the host-girl presented herself as directed. “Here,” the child-human whispered voicelessly, with associations of guilt and fear.

“I had supposed this body was vacant,” Melody said disapprovingly, also voicelessly—for this was a dialogue of two minds within a single brain, and Melody did not want the listening recorders of the Imperium to eavesdrop on this very private matter. She had never been in transfer before, but her mind remained her last reservoir of individuality, and she was a private person. To share a brain, to have every thought monitored even in the process of formulation…

“No—we are always present,” the girl said. “We do not interfere, cannot interfere, but we must live. We must not forget.”

“I fear I have not kept up with the times,” Melody said, making a mental twang of strings that translated into a figurative shake of the head. “Transfer is now to live hosts?”

“Always. Was it ever otherwise?”

A woman out of touch with the present, transferred to the body of a girl out of touch with the past! “Who are you?”

“I am Yael. I remained hidden, as instructed. How did you find me?”

A mental smile. “The Tarot found you, Yael. It reveals what is hidden in the mind. In this case—another mind. Tell me about yourself.”

“We’re not supposed to intrude—”

“So I gather. You are merely supposed to sit mute while an alien occupies your body. I understood slavery had been abolished in System Etamin.” A system was the next unit below the sphere, the planets associated with a single star. There was a major slave-culture within Segment Etamin, but not System Etamin—for what the distinction was worth.

“Slavery?” Emotion of confusion.

“You don’t even know what the concept means? That’s sophisticated servitude indeed! Even the slavemasters of Sphere Canopus have not taken it this far. By what right can any society require an individual to give up her own body? I should have thought the Polarians, with their adoration of the individual before society, would at least have made some roundabout objection.”

“Oh, you mean hosting,” Yael said. “Nobody made me. I wanted to do it. I get good pay, and the Society of Hosts watches out for me, and I get adventure that I could never have myself, and—”

“Oh, I comprehend. It is a business.” The expression Melody used had tones of prostitution, a human vice much ridiculed in Sphere Mintaka, but only the literal meaning translated into human thought. “Tell me about it —in your own concepts.”

Yael explained: She was the child of a poor farmer in the protected wilderness of Planet Outworld. Her parents had both been of subnormal intelligence, and had been allowed to beget offspring—limited to one—in return for voluntary commitment to the land. Few citizens wanted to reside in the vine forest or to preserve the ways of Outworld’s Stone Age heritage, as this involved primitive hunting and planting, chewing of dinosaur hides, and much exposure to discomfort and danger. But this man and woman had so desired a family that they had undertaken this cruel life—and thrived on it.

But one day a wounded predator dinosaur had charged their hut and wiped them out. Only Yael had survived, because she had been gathering wild juiceberries at the time. Still a child, she had been taken in by another forest family—but it had not been a happy mergeance. When it became apparent that this low-aura, low-intelligence waif was about to mature into an astonishingly lovely woman, her adoptive father had made plans to supplement the family income by engaging her in concubinage to the highest-bidding local landowner. This would have been a life of inferiority and disillusion as her youthful beauty faded, terminating in the drudgery of servant-status. Yael had aspired to more than this; she had the soul of an adventuress despite her circumstance.

“How did you get the notion of adventure?” Melody inquired, not unkindly. “Wasn’t mere survival among dinosaurs adventure enough?”

“Not after my natural folk died,” Yael said simply, and Melody knew immediate shame. But the girl continued, unaware of it. “The dinosaurs weren’t so bad, really, when you got to know them. They just figured the territory was theirs, since they were there first.”

“How did you select your name?” Melody asked, changing the subject.

“There are popular names here, after famous people in our history. Many boys are called Flint, after Outworld’s first transferee, and many girls are Honeybloom, after his wife. When my family was lost, I could not keep the name they gave me, so I chose a new one. There was a poem they read to me as a child, and I always liked it, so I took the name of the ancient poetess who made it, Yael Dragon. It seemed to fit, because Etamin is the Eye of the Dragon in Solarian myth, and it was a dragon that—”

She broke off, and Melody realized that she was crying. As well she might. A dinosaur, a virtual living dragon, had destroyed her family; a cruel identification, but perhaps a necessary one.

“What is the poem?” Melody inquired, hoping again to take the girl’s mind away from the tragedy.

“Actually, she didn’t write it,” Yael said. “It was to her, really. Does that make a difference?”

Melody thought again of her own uncapsulated past, the confusion and shifting of rationales. “No. Not if she was responsible for it.”

“I never really understood it, but it does something to me. I—well, it goes like this:”

“Why that’s a Tarot poem,” Melody said. “The title means ‘truce’ in the archaic framework of that day. Key Six means ‘The Lovers.’ And the four qualities in the second stanza are like the four archaic suits. Bright as a disk or coin—”

“As a penny,” Yael supplied. “We still use metal money in the vine forest; it keeps better.”

“Yes,” Melody agreed, delving for more interpretations. “Sensitive as a wand—the wand of a magician or musical conductor, and of course the second Tarot suit. Emotion refers to the Suit of Cups, the flow of water, of tears. And unstability—that’s Swords, of course, that balance on the knife’s edge, or the sword hanging by a thread. That refers back to the title, too, integrating the whole.”

“I never realized all that!” Yael exclaimed.

“Well, perhaps I exaggerate. It is too easy to interpret in terms of the familiar, and I see Tarot everywhere I go. Notice how the four triplets deal respectively with frustration, love, ruin, and conclusion—like the suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks. And the poem stops just short of the thirteenth line. The thirteenth Key of the Tarot was traditionally nameless, or Death, which—but there I go again!”

“No, it’s interesting. Do you know what the minionette is?”

“That would be a small, delicate, dainty woman, the diminutive of minion, which itself has special connotations of illicit charm.”

“I wonder who it was who made it for her?”

“I could analyze it more thoroughly, if you really—”

“No! I’d rather have the mystery. Then I can still dream that maybe it was meant for me, even though it was on another world over a thousand years ago. Is that crazy?”

“Poems are meant for the ages,” Melody assured her. “And often they are not intended to be completely understood.”

And so the girl had sought the realm of interstellar adventure. But she had no personal brilliance or education, and her Kirlian aura was barely normal. Her soul would never range across the galaxy in transfer. Her dreams of being a great lady of space, visiting far planets, dazzling strange powerful men, and interacting with alien creatures were vain. Sheer foolishness, this wish to be rich and intelligent and cultured and bold and fascinating. (Melody matched those concepts with suits as she listened: rich as in Coins, bold as in Swords—she had to stop doing that!) But what a dream, to be a truly free woman!

“A dream we all share,” Melody murmured to herself. “But so many of us are chained…”

So Yael had been realistic. There was only one way she could be a Lady of Space, and she took it. She had run away from home and made application to the Society of Hosts.

“The Society of Hosts,” Melody murmured. “Whose symbol is the Temperance card of the Tarot, keyed into the Suit of Aura. Now the appearance of that card falls into place.”

“I don’t know about that,” Yael replied uncertainly. “But they do have a picture of a lady pouring two cups of water into each other—why, there it is!”

There it was, of course: the second card Melody had drawn from the deck and laid on the table. Yael did not recognize the significance, being unfamiliar with the Tarot deck and its related concepts. But Melody saw it: a soul being poured from one physical container into another. The starry background suggested galactic implications, as indeed there were. Transfer was the very essence of galactic civilization; without it modern society would collapse.

“Get on with your story,” Melody said.

“The Society accepted me,” Yael said. “Just like that. I could hardly believe it. But now I understand. I don’t have much of an aura or much of a mind, but my body is good, and that’s what they need. Transferees don’t care about the host-mind, and they can’t use a high host-aura at all, but they like the best bodies. So I’m the perfect host! After twenty years of host service, I can retire with a good pension, if I want to. Meanwhile, I get adventure. But I’m only supposed to watch, not bother you.”

“There may not be much adventure,” Melody said. “I’m of Mintaka, the Music Sphere, and I’m going home again first opportunity. I do not crave intrigue or excitement.”

“Oh,” Yael said, disappointed. “You’re such a nice entity even if you are an alien, and you have such a fine mind, even I can feel it. You’re everything I wanted to be. I wish you’d stay.”

Melody found herself feeling flattered. “You actually want to have your body controlled by an alien intellect?”

“It is the only way I can be what I can never be,” Yael said simply.

“But suppose a transferee abused your body? Damaged it?”

“The God of Hosts protects me.”

“The God of Hosts?” Melody inquired, amazed. “You believe in that?”

“Of course. ‘Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet—lest we forget, lest we forget.’ That’s the Society prayer. All hosts have to memorize it.”

Melody pondered. If a host forgot it would mean the loss of identity. It was the same for a transferee. Memory was all that distinguished one personality from another, when aura faded in an alien body.

Melody returned to the cards. “The Star—that’s your hope for glamour and adventure. To obtain it, you must suffer loss, the loss of your body. For twenty years. When you get it back, your prime will be gone. That’s a terrible price.”

“It’s no worse than what I would have had at home,” Yael pointed out.

Melody could not refute that “Well, I’ll stay for a while,” she decided. “I don’t have much choice in the matter myself. But don’t go away; I want you handy, just in case.

“I can’t go away,” Yael said.

“You know what I mean. Don’t play dumb. Don’t hide in the woodwork. I don’t like preempting your body, but I stop the music at preempting your mind.”

“You mean I can join in your adventure? Not just watch?” The girlish personality seemed incredulous.

“It’s your adventure too,” Melody said. “Now let’s brace the Imperium.” She put away the cards, stood up, walked to the computer terminal, and pushed the contact button, her motions now sure and smooth. This wasn’t a bad body at all, once she got acclimatized to it.

“I’m ready to deal with the authorities,” Melody announced out loud.

“Select clothing,” the computer voice said.

Melody played a sour note that came out as an unfeminine snort. “You dress us,” she said to Yael.

“In what style?”

“Any style you want. It’s your body, and a good one.” Then she reconsidered, remembering the potential of the female body among Solarians. “But cover the mammaries; I don’t want to get impregnated right away.”

“The breasts are always covered. Why should there be any—any—?”

“You mean it doesn’t happen automatically?”

“Only when a girl agrees, usually. There are laws—”

“Very well. Dress it up pretty.”

Yael was glad to oblige. Melody relaxed and let the girl use her own notions, ordering flimsy underclothing followed by more substantial overclothing. There was a two thousand Solarian year spread in human clothing fashions, and any dress within that range was currently acceptable. So Yael chose apparel approximating the style of her namesake, who had resided in pre-Spherical times on Planet Earth. She wore a white blouse with images of flowers printed on it, and a short black skirt that showed the lower half of her legs. Light slippers covered her feet. Her hair flowed free, behind and to the sides.

Melody really didn’t understand the nuances of Solarian dress; Mintakans and most other sapients did not use clothing. But she was satisfied that this sufficed. As she kept reminding herself, it would not be for long.

3. Society of Hosts

COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATING * — / ^o_o

—where is quadpoint?—

*perhaps he swallowed a hard rock*

AMUSEMENT

—some obstructions developing in selected segments prior report of successful infiltration premature three segments appear to have become aware of our effort—

/bungling cannot be tolerated which segments?/

—knyfh, etamin, weew—

_o^o detail? _o^o

*(duocirc, your elements are misangled)*

^o_o ? sorry, recent recombination confuses ^o_o

/if we are finished with the personal hygiene/

—etamin agent discovered and circumvented by locals this indicates that natives are aware of our purpose and are attempting to prevent our knowing they know no real problem as we have alerted our discovered agent, but any spread of resistance would be awkward knyfh is sophisticated magnetic culture resembling ^o_o status there uncertain bears scrutiny lest they countertrap us at moment of action weew may be a misreport investigation proceeding—

^o_o no adverse indications from lodo or bhyo? These also are formidable center-galaxy cultures ^o_o

—no adverse indications suggest delay of overt strike until investigations completed primarily knyfh—

*concurrence?*

— / ^o_o CONCURRENCE — / ^o_o

*POWER*

— / ^o_o CIVILIZATION ^o_o / —

The door-panel slid open, and she stepped into a hall. A human man stood there. Sure enough, as Yael had reassured her, he did not leap to impregnate her, though he looked as though the notion had crossed his mind.

“Greetings, Mistress Melody,” he said. “You have adapted very well. Do not be afraid; we shall take good care of you.”

The information was in her mind, but Melody hardly cared to delve through the layers of cultural meaning. She spoke silently to Yael: “Why does he call me ‘mistress’? Why does he think I am afraid?”

“I don’t know,” Yael admitted. “Unmarried girls are Miss, and Mistress means a concubine—”

“He’s going to impregnate us!” Melody cried, alarmed.

“He wouldn’t dare. All we’d have to do is scream.”

So the Solarians did use sound for defense, just as Mintakans did. “How would a mere scream stop him?”

“Other men would come—”

“Because they wanted to be first to do the impregnation?”

“To enforce the law. Alien transferees aren’t supposed to be molested.”

“Oh. That makes sense. I was afraid—”

“But now I remember,” Yael interrupted. “Mistress also means a rich lady, or maybe even a child, I think.”

“Or an alien lady?”

“Maybe.”

So the address confused the native too. Odd note. How had the Solarians achieved such galactic influence when their language suffered from such imprecision? But she knew the answer: A thousand years ago Sphere Knyfh had brought the secret of transfer to Sol instead of to one of the larger Spheres, for reasons that were opaque to those other Spheres, and this had given Sol a phenomenal start. But Sphere Sol had not been able to handle galactic matters effectively; thus the Fringe planet of Outworld, which possessed strong Polarian currents, had moved into prominence. Outworld’s system of Etamin had taken over the segment without ever forming a sphere; perhaps that was one reason the Spheres were willing to accede to it. Outworld’s interest was the segment, nothing else. If the segment fell apart, Outworld would be nothing.

The man guided her to a larger chamber set with plush chairs contoured for Solarian torsos. “Sit down, my dear,” he said. “The Colonel will arrive in a moment.”

Melody plumped down. The man looked away.

“Better close your legs,” Yael advised.

“Legs? Why? They’re comfortable.”

“The dress—it spreads when you sit, so he can see up inside your thighs. That’s not supposed to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it—he—it just isn’t—”

“Girl, you’re dischordant!” Melody was aware that she was invoking another imprecision of the language; to her a musical chord was good and a dischord unpleasant, but the human “discord” was unrelated. Well, she could not be held responsible for the inadequacies of human speech! “What exactly are you trying to say?”

Yael was obviously embarrassed; Melody felt her reactions. “When a man sees up a girl’s legs, he gets all excited, unless he’s a doctor. Same as when he sees into her blouse. Sex, you know.”

“Oh, that’s right! Solarians are sexed entities,” Melody said, remembering. She had been acutely conscious of this all along, yet had overlooked it because she had been thinking in terms of mammaries. “They cover themselves so carefully to avoid visual stimulation.” She pulled her legs together.

“Didn’t you know?” Yael asked, surprised. “You were so worried about impregnation—”

Melody was amazed. “You mean sex is connected with impregnation?”

“Well of course!” Yael laughed with embarrassment “How else can—”

“Do you know, I never really made the connection?” Melody said. “I knew the sight of mammaries caused the male to impregnate the female, but the concept of sexuality itself—I mean as an aspect of looking at the genital organs—well, Mintakans are basically neuter, and the genitals are always exposed. We don’t have sex play in that sense.”

Now Yael was amazed. “Then how do you—make more Mintakans?”

“We bud them, of course. Sex has nothing to do with it, except as sex is affected by reproduction. And most buds are produced by paired males.” Then, as an afterthought: “But if seeing up legs has the same effect as seeing mammaries, I’ll certainly keep my legs covered. Why didn’t you choose a longer skirt?”

“Well, a girl wants to have some sex appeal—”

“I don’t understand that at all!”

“I don’t understand Mintakan sex either!”

“But I explained it!” Obviously the girl’s limitation of intellect was the problem here. “Still, I should have grasped the pervasiveness of human sexuality from my Tarot studies. This shows how ignorant an entity can be, despite intensive study.”

“But aren’t you female? Transfer can’t change sex…”

“I am female now. However, if—”

“I’m getting confused again.”

The Colonel arrived: old, brisk, suave, sure. “So the little girl is with us at last,” he remarked, glancing down at Melody. “Orderly, fetch some ice cream.”

“Little girl?” Yael inquired internally. She had no voice except when Melody expressly facilitated it. “My body is twenty years old!”

“That’s only two and a half Mintakan years,” Melody told her. “I’m four times your age, chronologically.” Then she did a human double take. “Ten Mintakan years—they forgot to make the translation!”

“You mean your years are longer than ours?” Yael inquired.

“Eight times as long, dear. I am referring to your standard Solarian years; I think there is another ratio for Outworld years.”

“There is. But we standardized on Sol, finally, because the Outworld year is thirty years long and it gets confusing.”

“Precisely. There has to be standardization. I’m an old neuter. Eighty Solarian years, two and a half Outworld years. But here’s the humor: They think I’m a child of ten Earth years.”

Yael began to laugh, and Melody joined her. Then it became overt. They laughed out loud.

“Are you all right?” the Colonel inquired, concerned.

“Where’s my ice cream?” Melody demanded, stifling further laughter for the moment. “I want my ice cream!”

“It’s coming,” the Colonel said. “Now I want you to understand several things, Melody. First, we are at war, but our own government doesn’t know it yet. I am acting in a private capacity, and we cannot tell even our own segment Ministers. It’s a big secret, you see. Do you understand that?”

“No,” Melody said honestly enough. How could the segment be at war without the Ministers knowing it? How could a Solarian officer—and not one of the highest ones, if she comprehended military rankings at all—keep secrets from his own superiors? It was nonsensical.

“Well, we’ll return to that later,” the Colonel said. “We never would have required the service of a person your age if we were not desperate. But we are doing all we can to protect your identity. Once the enemy gets at our Population files—” He shook his head. “The point is, you have the highest Kirlian aura ever measured. Do you comprehend the significance of that?”

“My ice cream is coming,” Melody said promptly.

The officer rolled his human eyeballs expressively upward. “Er, yes. Momentarily. Uh, Melody, the Society of Hosts forbids the exploitation of children, so they have no child-hosts. And it is essential that we work through the Society. That’s why we had to transfer you to the body of a young woman. This body is larger and more, er, mature than you are accustomed to, quite apart from the change in species. When we get a dispensation through the Society, we’ll retransfer you to a more appropriate host. I apologize for the uh, awkwardness.” His eyes strayed to her legs, which had fallen apart again.

Melody snapped them shut. “I want to go home,” she said, screwing up her human face in its version of misery. She was beginning to enjoy this.

“I wish you’d stay,” Yael said wistfully. “You’re putting that officer through hoops! I’d never have the nerve.”

But the Colonel was talking again. “We can’t send you home yet, Melody. We are at war. Secretly. It is a crisis. Now first you’ll have to join the Society of Hosts—”

Melody pouted. “No.”

Yael objected. “You have to join the Society! You’re a transferee!”

“Where’s my ice cream?” Melody demanded. And privately to Yael: “That ice cream had better be good. Exactly what is it?”

The Colonel sighed, expelling wind through his mouth in a manner impossible to a Mintakan. He made a gesture with his hand, and the orderly entered, bearing a covered tray.

“It’s fattening,” Yael said.

Melody worked that out rapidly. It seemed slenderness was a desirable physical quality, and what they fed children made the body grow. She didn’t want to degrade her host’s body.

“Here is your ice cream,” the Colonel said, forcing a smile.

Melody peered at it. It was a whitish mass of cold substance in a flat dish. Not at all like Mintakan food. “No.”

“What?” the Colonel asked, startled.

“Eat it yourself,” Melody said.

The man’s brow furrowed. “You wish me to eat your ice cream?”

“You can’t do that!” Yael protested. “He’s almost a general!”

“Yes,” Melody said aloud. Childhood had its privileges.

“Then will you cooperate?” the Colonel inquired wearily.

“I want to go home!”

The Colonel took the dish and began spooning the noxious substance into his mouth. “Um, takes me back thirty years,” he remarked around melting cream. “Now about the Society of Hosts—”

“They can have some ice cream too,” Melody said brightly. It should not require much more of this to convince them to send her right back to Mintaka!

The Colonel grimaced. He leaned over and touched a button. “SOH rep to office,” he snapped.

“I think he just called your bluff,” Yael said nervously. “He’s just buzzed the Society of Hosts.”

Almost immediately a creature appeared in the doorway. “Circularity,” it said. It resembled a large blob with a tapering trunk above and large ball below.

“A Polarian!” Melody exclaimed internally.

“I am Fltosm,” it said, buzzing its trunk-ball against its own hide.

“Hello, Flotsam,” Melody greeted it.

“Have some ice cream, comrade,” the Colonel said. “If you will place a quantity on the floor…” the Polarian suggested, indicating with its speech-ball where the appropriate place for such a deposit would be.

The Colonel poured a little melted ice cream on the floor. The Polarian rolled over it several times. The cream adhered to its wheel and was drawn up inside its wheel-housing. “Very good,” it said.

The Colonel turned to Melody. “Now if you are satisfied…”

“I want to go home,” Melody repeated.

“You are very clever, Matriarch,” Fltosm said, glowing.

Melody grimaced. “You solved the conversion!”

“Circularity.”

The Colonel looked around. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” Melody said. “What are the advantages to membership in the Society of Hosts?”

“It is essential to our war effort!” the Colonel exclaimed. “We can’t trust any other—”

“In a moment,” the Polarian interposed neatly. “Matriarch, the home-body of the transferee must not be neglected. It must be occupied and exercised regularly, lest the synapses become detuned. Were an entity to remain in transfer for a period as long as a Sol-year without accommodation for its own body, that body would become unsalvageable, and the entity’s aura would accelerate decay. The two are linked, always—aura and body —in fact they are one, mere aspects of the wheel of life. Separation is deleterious.”

“The wheel of life!” Melody repeated, thinking of the Tarot Trump titled the Wheel of Fortune. That was naturally the way a Polarian would think. “Flotsam, you make unholy sense. The Society of Hosts takes care of hosts—and of transferees too. But I’m not going to be in transfer long, so I am ill-behooved to join.”

“Circularity.”

The human officer puffed up. “See here, are you agreeing with her?” he demanded of the Polarian. “You know the vital importance to our galaxy of—”

“The interest of the individual is paramount,” Fltosm replied, vibrating its ball apologetically against the bulging expanse of its lower torso.

“But we need her!” the Colonel said. “She has an aural intensity of two hundred twenty-three, the highest ever measured. With our own government infiltrated by hostages—”

Yael was amazed. “Two hundred and twenty-three times normal? It’s impossible!”

“The aura is possible,” Melody informed her. “My cooperation may not be.” Then, aloud: “Flotsam, I like your Polarian logic. Will you assist me in returning to my natural state?”

“With pleasure. It is merely a matter of—”

“Never!” the Colonel roared. “We made a pact, the five of us, to save our galaxy. Do you want me to summon the Canopian? She stays here!”

So Sphere Canopus was involved in this, too. But not Segment Etamin’s own government?

The Polarian was undaunted. “This is not circular. Neither my culture nor the Society of Hosts permit involuntary transfer.”

“Well, Andromeda does!” the Colonel said. “If we don’t stop them, we’ll all be hostages. Then where will your precious individual rights be? That’s what this war is all about.”

Fltosm addressed Melody: “I regret I cannot assist you without exchange of debt. In matters of interhuman protocol I cannot interfere.”

“I’m not human; I’m Mintakan,” Melody said. But the Colonel’s remarks about the galactic situation alarmed her. If another Energy War were really upon them, there was no security in Sphere Mintaka! “I will exchange debt.”

“Watch it,” Yael advised. “Debt is a mighty funny, mighty serious business with Poles. I don’t understand it, really, but—”

“I am roughly familiar with the concept; it is in the Polarian aspect of Tarot,” Melody told her.

“In accordance with the Compromise Convention of System Etamin,” the Polarian said formally, “I proffer a modified debt exchange, abatement inherent.”

“As an entity of vassal-Sphere Mintaka, I accept,” Melody said.

“You can’t do this!” the Colonel shouted, stepping between them.

“You sure can’t,” Yael agreed. “We’re under martial law here.”

“Shut up and watch,” Melody told her. “Flotsam’s one smart musician.”

“I hereby impress you, Entity Melody of Mintaka, into the Society of Hosts,” the Polarian continued. “The Society is now your representative, and will require your return to your own physique within one Sol-day of now. You will perform the single service of exorcising and interrogating one hostage-entity.”

“This is preposterous!” the Colonel said. “No one can—”

“Agreed,” Melody said. “Tell me how.”

“Necessary review,” Fltosm said. “Originally transfer was to ‘empty’ hosts, those bodies whose minds had vacated, and who were effectively dead, with no Kirlian aura associated. The true essence of personality lies in the aura, what some viewpoints call the soul. When the aura of one entity was transferred to the vacant body of another entity, that body became the living personality of the first entity. But the aura could not survive long away from its natural host, and faded at the rate of one normal intensity per Sol-day, approximately. Thus only high-Kirlian entities could transfer.”

“Hey, I didn’t know this!” Yael murmured.

“More recent developments in the science of transfer have resulted in voluntary hosting,” the Polarian continued. “That is, the host is not vacant, but retains its aura, permitting the temporary occupancy of the more potent aura of a transferee. Because the host-aura is able to maintain its body compatibly, less energy is drawn from the visiting aura, and the fading of that visitor is thereby lessened. We have now enabled the transferee to survive in a foreign host as long as ten times the duration originally possible. In certain cases, tenure can be even longer, as with transfer between compatible siblings of the same Sphere. You, Melody, now occupy the voluntary host of a young Solarian female native to this planet. You are not aware of her aura, as it is less than half of one percent the intensity of yours. But that aura is nevertheless promoting your welfare in transfer, and that aura is protected by the Society of Hosts.”

“See, I was supposed to stay hidden,” Yael said. “If they find out I came out—”

“It is our secret,” Melody assured her.

“Now it seems the entities of Galaxy Andromeda have perfected a technique through which involuntary hosting is feasible,” Fltosm continued. “They are able to transfer their high-Kirlian auras into lesser-Kirlian hosts without the prior consent of those hosts. And they have done so, taking over a number of our most sensitively located entities. We call them hostages: involuntary hosts. There is no way to discover a hostage except by aural verification, which requires the application of complex equipment. Thus we do not know which of our government officials are hostages, for we cannot require them to undertake aural verification without alerting them to our suspicion. It is an uncircular situation.”

“Agreed,” Melody said.

“I’ll say!” Yael exclaimed. “Can’t test the spies without making it worse.”

“So we have initiated a quasi-legal program of hostage identification and research. This is not under the direction of our governing Ministers, because we know that at least one of them is himself a hostage. But our program is essential to the welfare of our segment and our galaxy. If the Andromedans infiltrate and conquer us, our entire galaxy may perish—literally. For they mean to draw away the binding energy of our atomic structure to facilitate the power required for their advancing civilization, and our very substance will disappear in the course of a few thousand years.”

Melody understood. She believed the Polarian, and knew now that it was no idle reason that chained her to this host. The survival of her galaxy was at stake. She would have to do what was required, however inconvenient it might be to her personal life.

“We operate through the Society of Hosts,” the Polarian went on, “because they alone possess the aural expertise to assure the absence of hostages in their own ranks. This is why it is necessary for all our operatives to join the Society. Aural verification is an unquestioned requirement for entry. No suspicion attaches. The Society has undertaken research into hostaging, but has been unable to duplicate the Andromedan technology. Perhaps if a living hostage could be studied—but we dare not touch any that we know of on this planet, because that would give away our knowledge to the Andromedans and precipitate an immediate crisis that could cost us the war.”

The Colonel smiled approvingly. “Not only are you sounding like a Solarian, now—you’re talking like a military man.”

“At times thrust has its applications,” the Polarian agreed, glowing with distaste. “But circularity will be required for the resolution.”

“Agreed,” the Colonel said. “Sorry I butted in.”

“It is the nature of your kind,” Fltosm said generously. Then, to Melody: “Society calculations indicate that a hostage can be reclaimed through our existent technology, provided the hostage is rendered unconscious and laid under siege by a completely superior aura of the same family. Perhaps a different aural family would succeed also; that is less certain. You understand how auras exist in related types, apart from intensity, some being compatible and others so diverse as to be incompatible?”

“Yes,” Melody said. “This accounts for what was historically known as ‘instinctive’ attraction or repulsion between given entities. A parallel could be made to your Solarian or Polarian blood types.”

“Yes. But even with a reasonably close match, the margin of superiority would have to be at least four to one over the besieged aura. The technology of Andromeda has evidently abated this necessity, but we of the Milky Way must resort to comparatively crude force. Therefore—”

“I believe I understand you at last,” Melody said. “You have located a hostage whose controlling aura is of my own aural type, too high for any other entity to overwhelm.”

“Precisely. It is a female hostage governed by an aura of fifty-two times normal intensity.”

“So you need an aura of two hundred and eight,” Melody finished. “Not many exist.”

“This is true. The highest available in Segment Etamin is one hundred fifty-nine, female—and she is of the wrong type. In fact, there are no female auras above one hundred and eighty in the galaxy—except for yours. You are thus indispensable. By the time the hostage’s aura fades to under forty, enabling another agent to make the attempt (ignoring for the moment the complication of typing, which may after all be irrelevant), one hundred and twenty days will have passed—and we shall have lost a crucial advantage, perhaps even the war itself. The potential information this hostage possesses is incalculable, and the element of surprise is also vital. Because she happens to be in a situation in which the Andromedans are unlikely to suspect any attempt at counterhostaging, we may be able to conquer her without their knowledge.”

“So you will retransfer me into that body, whereupon I will be able to tap the secrets of Andromeda,” Melody said. “This is the mission for which you originally summoned me, isn’t it?”

“True.”

“But you cannot require any more of me than this one service. Within one day I’ll be home—and Imperial Outworld won’t bother me again, though the galaxy perish.”

“True. The welfare of the individual preempts that of society in our Sphere, and the terms of the debt exchange must be honored.”

“Fair deal. Show me your hostage.”

“It is a Solarian officer aboard a Sphere Sol ship in space—the flagship of the Segment Etamin fleet. It will be necessary to mattermit you to a shuttlecraft, that is now completing its voyage to that fleet. After the mission, we will transfer you directly back to your Mintakan body.”

“Very pretty,” Melody remarked. “Were I in a Polarian host, I could think of another manner to abate debt.”

Fltosm glowed. She had paid the Polarian the courtly compliment of suggesting it was a suitable partner for mating. Polarians, like Mintakans and in contrast to Solarians, arranged for mating on intellectual grounds. It was a system that made sense to the mature mind.

“I am jealous,” the Colonel said, smiling. And this was a lesser compliment, for he had seen up her host-legs and was reacting in the Solarian manner. But it reminded her: In this host, sex was not merely a mode of reproduction, but a tool of social influence. She must keep that in mind, in case she had need of it.

4. King of Aura

*you missed a council meeting, :: *

:: necessary omission swallowed a hard rock progress? ::

*located focus of resistance in segment etamin it is the society of hosts*

:: that will require a special effort ::

*I am sure dash will make it*

:: with what result remains to be noted ::

The fleet was impressive. It was rather like a great city in deep space, or a miniature galaxy. A concentration of planetoids, a diffuse globe—no, a cluster, she decided, with the concentration in the center and thinning bands extending out. Beautiful.

It was of course an anachronism, since such ships were limited to sublight speeds, so could not even traverse a single sphere, let alone a segment, in a normal sapient lifetime. But the rationale was that it might one day be possible to transfer spaceships. At such time as that particular technological breakthrough occurred, the military reasoning went, the Age of Empire would come. So these ships were built and maintained and operated at phenomenal expense—in a parking orbit around Star Etamin. The other segments all had similar fleets. Similar follies, Melody thought. But the fleet was spectacular, at least in the shuttle’s viewscreen.

The shuttle shot toward the center, decelerating with a vigor that caused respiratory discomfort to the host-body. Melody had been phased in to the travel-velocity of the shuttle, which itself was phasing in to the orbital velocity of the fleet; now there was a lot of inertia to counter. But Melody insisted on sitting up so that she could watch the screen. There was also a port, but it was useless; the ships were not visible to her untrained naked eye. So she braced the sagging mammaries with one forearm, clenched her jaw to keep it from drawing down painfully, and stayed with the screen. She had never seen a space fleet before, and never expected to see another; this was interesting.

Beside her, a novice Solarian crew-member also watched. His head-hair was of reddish hue, and at the moment so were his eyes. Melody knew this was from the temporary stress of deceleration on the surface veins of the eyeballs; the normal color of the main part of the ball was white, even on brown or black-surfaced entities. But the contrast of red eyes and blue skin was momentarily striking. Though she probably looked much the same. Her host’s skin, now that she thought about it, was a delicate blue. That was the native color of Outworld. Green, rather; Melody was not yet precise about color vision. It occurred to her, however, that this could be a handy coding system for species with a lot of skin surface, like the Solarians: a different color for each star.

“Isn’t that—something!” the man gasped. Although he had been aboard the shuttle when she mattermitted on, he had not seen the fleet before.

“New to you, too?” Melody asked. This formal query when the answer was either known or irrelevant was one of the little Solarian niceties of interaction.

“Yes. I’ve never been to space before.” Like her, he spoke through clenched teeth, though his jawline still sagged somewhat.

“Neither have I.” Now they had a common framework and she was surprised to discover that it did make her feel more at ease. She paused for several shallow but difficult breaths, aware that his eyes were following the labored movements of her chest. This sidewise torque did his eyeballs no good; he should have clamped down his eyelids for added support. But it seemed the male liked to see even the suggestion of female points of distinction, despite the concealment of cloth and discomfort of gravity. “Who are you?”

He hesitated. “Call me March,” he said at last. There was a suppressed stress on it that did not seem to be entirely due to the deceleration. Was that his real name? But he could not be another transfer agent; his aura was merely galactic norm. Normals could not detect the feel of neighboring auras, but high-Kirlians could. Maybe he had been drafted, and did not like being reminded of his happy past. Possibly he had been assigned to watch her, in case her own inexperience led to complications. Yet he had started the shuttle trip well before she had been summoned to Imperial Outworld. Could he have been a convict, released from the prison-colony planet of this system, now shunted to space service? No; he seemed too young, too innocent. She was inclined to trust him. To a reasonable extent. “Yael,” she said.

“They messaged me… you were coming,” he said. His power of speech was fading; this deceleration was an awful strain. “But they did not tell me”—a pause to catch up on breathing—“how pretty you would be.”

“Hey, I like him!” Yael said.

“Then you answer him,” Melody replied to her. “It’s your body he admires. Mine would sicken him.” And she turned over control of the vocal apparatus.

“Thank you,” Yael said aloud. “You’re not bad yourself. Are you from Outworld?” As though a green man could be from anywhere else.

“The deepest backvines,” March admitted.

“Me too.” They exchanged smiles. Then the stiffening deceleration forced them both to be silent.

Melody faded in and out, and time became expanded or condensed—she was not quite sure which. The view-screen showed them passing the layers of the cluster fleet like a comet swinging in to its star. First there were the small scouts, needleshaped because that made them harder to spot and hit as they moved about. It had nothing to do with atmospherics; they flew sidewise as readily as forward, orienting to keep their smallest cross section facing the enemy. They quested far beyond the main mass of the fleet, poking into whatever crannies of space they spied, like curious insects, maneuvering unpredictably. How convenient the human-host imagery became; there were no insects on Melody’s home planet.

Melody found her human tongue twitching around in her mouth, and her nostrils narrowing. She stopped it; she could not afford such reactions. The specialists of Imperial Outworld had insisted on providing her with a weapon of self-defense despite her protests. Now it was in her nose: two electrically neutral tubelike units whose mechanism could be invoked by the proper combination of air and pressure. She did not dare try to remove the units; they were of the self-destruct variety—or so the Colonel had assured her. But she had no intention of using them. So she quelled her reactions and returned her attention to the fleet.

The next layer consisted of the more disciplined system of attack craft—small, expendable ships which could move out fast and deliver a wallop. Like poisonous reptiles—another analogy lifted from the convenient mind of her host, who seemed to have a ready imagination for such things—they were brightly colored. Perhaps, however, that was merely enhancement by the screen, color-coding them to match the Spheres with which they were associated: Sol, Polaris, Canopus, Spica, Nath… and even her own Mintaka? How beautiful it must look—if she could only be sure which one it was.

Of course many of these ships had not been constructed within the Spheres with which they were associated. It would have taken the Mintakan craft three thousand years to travel at half-light speed from Mintaka to Etamin— and that was longer than the segment had existed. Mattermission would have done it instantly, but was prohibitively expensive for an entire space ship. Transfer was instant and cheap, but of course it was not possible with inanimate objects. It was strictly an energy phenomenon: living energy in the form of Kirlian auras, dead energy in the form of magnetic power or “strong” atomic force. Some theorists thought that the Ancients had been able to imbue physical objects with auras so they could transfer them cheaply to far parts, but few really believed that. Except, perhaps, the military entities who had conceived of these segment fleets all over the galaxy. Regardless, that technology did not exist today. So the ships had to be constructed right here in System Etamin, by transferred entities from other Spheres. Mind, not geography, was the guiding factor: a Mintakan ship was made by genuine Mintakans, though they used human or Polarian bodies. Any Mintakan spacefarer would be at home aboard it. Except someone planetbound like Melody, who had never even seen a Mintakan spaceship before.

Then she did a double take, surprising herself again by this human mannerism. It was a kind of backing up and second inspection with a sensation of mild amazement. “That’s Tarot!” she exclaimed.

“That’s what?” Yael inquired, and March’s head turned slightly. Each thought the remark had been directed at her/him, since Melody had spoken out loud.

“The Mintakan ship; it’s shaped like the Broken Atom of the Tarot Suit of Aura. At least it looks that way on the screen.”

“It’s to provide spin while gathering light-energy,” March explained. “I was briefed about the fleet before I was exiled. The ships from Segment Knyfh are similar. An outer shell to collect the light, and an inner nucleus for the crew. The whole thing rotates just fast enough to provide proper gravity.”

“How ingenious!” Melody said. Then they both paused for breath again, and she wondered: What was this about his being exiled? But she was sure it would be inappropriate to inquire, and at the moment she was more intrigued by the shapes of the ships, now so clear in the screen.

Some were like great wide-bladed swords, others like monstrous coins, still others like wands or cups. “To think it’s been right there under my strings—I mean nose —all this time, all my life, and I never thought to look!” Melody exclaimed to Yael. “All these ships of space— we are a Tarot-symbol segment!”

Yael was diplomatically silent. She knew little of Tarot, and less of symbolism, and hardly saw either the relevance or significance of such a connection. So what if a sword was used as the shape of a ship and the symbol on a card? What was wrong with that? So long as each design could collect the light, as March had explained, and spin up enough gravity…

And this in turn gave Melody further pause for thought. There was not only a substantial aura differential between them; there was an intellectual gulf. Yael was just below the human norm in intelligence, moderately below in education, and well below in intellectual experience. Melody was between 1.5 and 1.7 on the Mintakan intelligence scale, roughly analogous to the human scale, and possessed a Segment Doctorate in General Learning. And she had a full lifetime behind her. Yet she realized now that there were fundamental equivalencies between her mind and that of her innocent host. They were both female, despite the technical asexuality of Mintakans, and both were novices in this particular situation. Given that basic set of similarities, Melody was able to appreciate the human girl’s view—and to grasp for the first time in her life what it meant to be intellectually handicapped. Yael genuinely could not appreciate the insights to be obtained from the observation of the parallelism of designs. But she didn’t feel stultified, did not suffer directly; she was literally too stupid to know what she was missing. Yet she was in every sense a person, a conscious, feeling entity.

It was a lesson in perspective that Melody hoped never to forget in the few years remaining to her. For she knew most of the sapients in the galaxy were more like Yael than like Melody. Melody had existed in an ivory tower, and it was now being blasted apart by new experience, exactly as the applicable Trump of the Tarot suggested. She had never realized how specifically it could pertain to her—which was part of this very experience. The strike of the lightning bolt enabled her to understand the nature of that lightning bolt.

Now the shuttle’s deceleration had eased off, and it was orienting on the hull of the mighty flagship, the Ace of Swords. The handle of the sword had seemed small from a distance, but it was a Solarian mile in diameter. This huge rotating mass resembled a veritable planetoid! The ship’s magnetic tractor field took hold of the shuttle and guided it into the end of the handle, where there was no gravity right at the axis of rotation. In virtual free-fall the little craft settled into a huge airlock, and a metal covering slid over it. They had docked.

Gas flooded the compartment, and Melody was reminded of her Tarot yet again: Naturally there was gas, since war and all things military were associated with the Suit of Gas whose symbol was the Sword. Solarians as a species were identified with the same suit. Not for nothing was it said throughout the segment: “Trouble, thy name is Sol.”

Pressure equalized. Melody unstrapped herself, discovering that she could stand, though gravity was minimal here. The port opened and she stepped carefully out, as March deferred to her in a reflex of Solarian etiquette that thrilled Yael. Half floating, Melody came to rest on the deck of the big ship. She found herself in a roughly hemispherical chamber formed by the inner curve of the hull and the dimly illuminated airlock panel above. “So this is the Ace of Swords,” she murmured.

In a moment a door phased open and a space officer strode in. He was a handsome Solarian of middle age, the blazon of Imperial Outworld on his chest: a neat superimposition of the ancient letter symbols O and W, the straight lines of the latter segmenting the former into five subsections:

These stood for the five neighboring Spheres, each with a curved side and one or two straight sides. Curve as in curve of Sphere, straight as in communication between points. Curve as in Polarian circularity, line as in Solarian linearity. The fundamental elements of Outworld society, the mergeance of two Spheres to form System and Segment Etamin. The combination of thinking that had made this a galactic power. All vested in this simple symbol.

There was a chill of terror that half paralyzed the host-body. Melody realized that it stemmed from the host-mind. “What is the matter, girl?” she demanded as the man approached.

“The magnet!” Yael screamed.

Now Melody saw something behind the man. It was a brilliantly colored glob that floated, yet it seemed quite solid. It was like a three-dimensional model of the Outworld emblem—a sphere with lines zig-zagging on it. “I see it, but it doesn’t look dangerous,” Melody said to Yael.

But the Solarian was upon them before Yael could explain. “How pretty you are, Yael of the Dragon World,” he spoke, extending his hand as he glided to a stop. “Welcome to the Ace of Swords.”

Of course they had not informed him of her real identity. The Society of Hosts protected the anonymity of those who wished it, and no one outside the Society could be completely trusted. So she used her host’s identity as a cover, which delighted the real Yael. Here was adventure, in name as well as fact!

“Captain Boyd, I presume,” Melody murmured past half-lowered eyelashes. This sort of signal was not as good as a throbbing harmony, but in an amusical body she just had to make do. She took the proffered hand.

There was the electric thrill of intense auras interacting. This was the Captain, all right; he had the highest Kirlian rating in the fleet, 150, and that was much of the reason he was captain. With the hostage threat, the only real security of command was to have top officers with Kirlian auras too high to be taken over by the enemy technique. The Society of Hosts had circled delicately, as the Polarians would have put it, or pulled strings as the Solarians described it, to get this officer into place in this crucial location. This single ship was capable of destroying the civilization of a full planet—and of course the only civilized planet within range of this ship was that of Imperial Outworld.

Captain Boyd’s aura was even higher than she had been informed. It was on the order of 175, the most potent she had encountered apart from her own, and it was first cousin to hers in type. She wasn’t certain whether this was sloppy testing on the part of the Society of Hosts, or sloppy records, or variance in standards of notation between the Spheres. Probably the Colonel had simply misremembered it, being more concerned with the actual hostage than with the other personnel of the ship. A pleasant surprise, though!

“Dash,” the Captain said. “Call me Dash… Yael.”

Melody made a little motion that accentuated her host’s twin mammaries, and smiled. “Dash.” Now that she knew that sexual interaction was possible apart from reproduction in this species, it was fun to see how well the equipment worked. So long as she never let it go too far. It was obvious that her body could never match the sheer physical power of the males of this species, so sexual appeal was also a potential equalizer.

Melody glanced at the hovering magnet that so upset Yael. “Might I inquire about your companion?”

He smiled. “Oh. Sorry. We tend to forget that planetaries aren’t used to fleet ways. This is Slammer the Magnet, my bodyguard. Low Kirlian, low intelligence, but the most loyal friend an entity ever had. Say hello to the lady, Slammer.”

Slammer shot forward so quickly that Melody’s reflexes were caught short. The ball slammed into her chest —and bounced away without impact. A grossly powerful magnetic field impinged painfully on her aura as contact was made.

Yael screamed, and part of that scream escaped the host-lips. They could have been crushed, host and transferee together, had that thing not reversed itself.

“Impressive, isn’t it,” Dash remarked. “You can see I’m quite safe with Slammer around. He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive—uh, that’s a cute expression from deep in human past, but quite applicable here. One word from me, and the living cannon-ball clears the way. If an entity tried to draw a weapon in my presence—boom, no entity. But don’t worry, Slammer is your friend too.” He turned his head to the hovering ball. “Protect Yael. Understand?”

The magnet dipped in an obvious acquiescence. Melody made a mental note to learn a lot more about magnets, soon. She didn’t like being around a living cannonball, and now understood Yael’s terror. This creature was dangerous!

The captain put his hand on the narrow section of her back and guided her gently forward. Again their auras overlapped delightfully. Instinctive attraction, Kirlian affinity—by any designation, it was a potent force.

“It’s such a pleasure to encounter a genuine Kirlian,” Dash said, echoing her thoughts by no coincidence. If his 175 had such impact on her, what did her 223 have on him? “Your beauty is more than physical; it surrounds you.”

“Naturally,” Melody agreed, making a little bounce to enhance the physical. In this fractional gravity, she bounced too high; only his hand on her kept her from rising to the ceiling. “That is the nature of the aura.”

“Hey, he’s on the make!” Yael warned.

“On make? Oh, I gather your thought now. He wishes to make an offspring, to impregnate this body. And we don’t want that.”

“Actually, it might not be so bad,” Yael mused. “I’ve never actually done it. My folks always kept me away from the boys, saving me for concubinage. But with a real space captain… I’ve had my antipreg shot, of course.”

So there was no risk of impregnation, regardless of sexual activity. That was good to know, but hard to adjust to, after Melody had so recently been forced to realize the close connection between the two, for Solarians.

Still, a good tool should not be used indiscriminately. “Let’s not rush it,” Melody said to Yael. “I’m a bit curious about this phenomenon myself, but I haven’t stayed female for eighty years for nothing. Actually it’s the aura that dazzles him.”

But privately she wondered. She was aware that Solarians were thoroughly sexual creatures, with the males constantly stimulated by the visible attributes of the females. Her experience in a Solarian host, combined with the pervasive sexual aspects of the Solarian Tarot, made that abundantly clear. But even so, there were conventions, such as the compulsive wearing of clothing, that modified it, lest humans degenerate into perpetual sexual orgies. Captain Boyd was coming on very strongly, near the permissible limit of social convention as she understood it. After allowing for the impact of their extraordinary auras, was there still too much sexual push? If so, why?

March had emerged from the shuttle. He exchanged salutes with the Captain, who directed him to the personnel sergeant. Then Boyd showed Melody through another airlock into the main ship, and they took a slow slide toward the outer rim. Gravity increased as they progressed down the chute, until it was Solarian-norm. They debouched in a narrow hall many levels down; space was not wasted in space. This was not because there was no room, but because of the value of building materials. A larger ship required great quantities of precious substances, and more fuel in order to maneuver. So economy was the keynote. But still this was a very large, elegant, powerful vessel.

There were handholds along the walls and ceiling, reminding Melody that ships of space were not always operating with convenient gravity. Up could become down, and complete freefall would make perambulation awkward. So one had to be able to grab and pull.

They entered a fair-sized room, well furnished with bolted-down couches and tables—the officer’s lounge. There was a quick round of introductions. Melody dutifully shook hands with each man and woman, mentally noting the names and aural intensity of each. They were all high-Kirlian entities—surprisingly high, in the fifty to one hundred range. Sphere Sol must have impressed every Kirlian available into service in the space fleet! Had the other Spheres done the same for their own ships?

“And here is your cabin—next to mine,” Dash said.

“Thank you. I will not be needing it, as I am returning to my home immediately after the completion of the mission,” Melody said briskly. “If you will show me the subject and set up the equipment…” She avoided the term “hostage”; surely the Captain knew her mission in detail, but the other officers would not.

“I assumed you would want to acclimatize,” Dash said. “A young girl like you, first visit to the fleet…”

“He’s on the make, all right,” Yael remarked. “Why don’t we go ahead and—”

But Melody still had the caution of age. “Let’s keep him guessing,” she told Yael. And to the Captain: “I appreciate your solicitude. You can express it most conveniently by facilitating my mission.”

“You certainly are businesslike. That’s good,” he commented ruefully. “I would not have reported the, shall we say, subject, if I had not anticipated an efficient and circumspect response. This is a most important matter.”

“Yes,” Melody agreed as they proceeded down another hall. “Do you have her under sedation?”

“No, of course not,” Dash said. “We don’t know how many subjects there are, but cannot safely assume this is the only one. If we showed that we were on to her, the others would act, perhaps killing her before we could interrogate her, and possibly going on to sabotage the ship. Since this is the command ship of the fleet, that would be problematical.”

“Yes, I understand,” she agreed.

“We would also lose whatever chance we had to crack this mystery, and that is far more important than either this ship or this whole fleet.” He paused. “I’m going to introduce you to her as the daughter of an Imperial Minister, so she won’t be suspicious. Our Ministers (no offense to Etamin!) are not necessarily overly bright, and they tend to meddle in things they hardly comprehend, and their children do the same. So your behavior will not seem peculiar to her. It will take us a while to get the equipment moved in and set up and tested, and we don’t want to alert her. Don’t get near enough for her to pick up your aura; if she recognized its strength she would take alarm.”

“I am not entirely ignorant of the requirements of the situation,” Melody reminded him primly, giving her bosom another twitch to abate any implied criticism. She had verified by her observation of the females aboard ship that her host’s architecture was indeed superior to the norm.

“She’s an officer in the medic corps,” Dash continued, giving that architecture a lingering glance. Whether as lowly as an exile crewman or as elevated as a seasoned captain, they all looked. “She is the officer in charge of atmospherics, among other things. A peculiarly vital spot. In time of crisis, she could sabotage this entire ship merely by making an ‘error’ in the computer setting for the craft atmosphere. We hype our air a bit for action, you see, and damp it in periods of inertia.”

“You play a dangerous game, leaving her there,” Melody remarked.

“There are very high stakes.”

“How did you discover her?”

“My intense aura. Not quite in a league with yours, of course—but still, the highest in the fleet. I can tell a lot about a person merely by shaking hands with him. High-Kirlians have sensitivities that low-Kirlians hardly suspect, as you know.”

“Yes.” The normals thought that no Kirlian aura could be measured or typed except by the use of complex equipment. For normals, that was true.

“When I touched Tiala—”

“You are good at touching people,” Melody remarked.

“Quite. I’m not quite as aggressive as I seem. I allow myself the repute of a Cassanova as a pretext to touch people long enough and intimately enough to analyze their Kirlian auras properly. I am assured, for example, that you have what may be the highest rating in our galaxy, though no prior information was given me about you. You must be well over two hundred! In Tiala’s case—”

“How do you analyze male auras?”

“We have frequent physical fitness sessions, of course. We indulge in sports and unarmed combat. I happen to hold the ship championship in encumbered wrestling. It can take some time to overcome a man when your feet are bound.”

“I can imagine.” She could also imagine how difficult it would be to get away from this man, once he had hold —even if the magnet were not hovering close behind.

“In Tiala’s case, I took her to bed—because I was suspicious. I made sure she had no inkling of my real interest in her. I am an excellent lover.”

“I believe it!” Yael said eagerly. But Melody kept silent.

“And I verified that there was a fundamental difference in her aura; it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. For one thing, it was too strong, a good ten units above its official rating—or so I thought. But personal judgment is largely intuitive; only the machine can make a really precise readout. So I photographed the aura secretly and sent the picture to Imperial Outworld for analysis. And it didn’t match at all. So we knew an alien had made her hostage.”

“Very perceptive, Dash.” And ruthless. He had played sex with a girl to trap her aural secret. Did she think he loved her?

“Thank you. It is part of my job to protect my ship.” And what else would he do—to protect his ship? “It is important that I come to know the subject without arousing her suspicion,” Melody said. “Perhaps I should play a game with her.”

“Well, I’m not sure the daughter of a Minister would—”

“Who can guess what the daughter of a Minister might do? I know some very good games. Tarot, for example. It—”

“Tarot!” Dash exclaimed. “I happen to be a scholar of that discipline myself.”

Melody appraised him with renewed interest. “Temple?”

“No. Free lance. I was never a Tarotist, just a casual student. But I dare say I know it as well as any.”

Marvelous, if true. Melody had spent most of her life in the study and practice of free-lance Tarot, and would quickly be able to determine his level of proficiency. But that could wait upon convenience. “Really? What is your Significator?”

“King of Aura,” he said. “Cluster deck, of course. Yours?”

“Queen—of Aura.”

“Oho! I should have known! High intelligence, strong will, intense aura. We are much alike.”

Very much alike. Melody could feel herself being drawn to this ruthless man, compelled by the commonality of qualities. She had never mated because she had never encountered an entity who was her equal, though a number had supposed they were. Or so she liked to tell herself. Perhaps the better, bitter truth was that after the Star of her hope and loss, so long ago, nothing in the universe could satisfy her. What weird chance had brought her to this handsome Solarian? Or was this Perseus, come to rescue the chained lady from the monster?

She decided to fend him off a bit longer, until she had opportunity to do a reading on this problem. There was still too much she did not know. “Alike within a twenty percent tolerance,” she said. Since there were five Kings and five Queens in the Cluster deck, and these were the only cards normally used as Significators for grown entities, the chances of matching suits were hardly remote. And entities in matching suits could be quite dissimilar in practice—as different as Solarian from Mintakan. She could not afford to attach undue importance to something which was really not a coincidence, but a reflection of their high auras.

“Do you think you can use Tarot to mask your purpose?” Dash inquired. “It will require several hours, as I said, to set up. We’ve never done such a procedure aboard ship before. If she gets suspicious, the task may become impossible.”

“A necessary risk. I am a transferee myself; we shall thus have four auras interacting. This will be complex. I must have some clear notion of the personal situation, or failure is likely.”

Dash sighed. “I see your point. Well, I shall introduce you and ask Tiala to take charge of you. Have you any medical training?”

“No.” Anything she knew would be Mintakan, at best inapplicable here, at worst dangerous.

“Too bad. Then we can’t use that as a pretext for extended dialogue. Still, you are both attractive young women; perhaps that will be enough.”

They arrived at the life-support section. A female Solarian came forward to meet them. “Sir?”

“Tiala of Oceana, this is Yael of Dragon, daughter of the Minister of Segment Coordination. She is touring this vessel.” He gave a slight human shrug, as though implying that he was humoring a spoiled child for political reasons. Tiala smiled fetchingly; even Melody’s nonhuman nature recognized the appeal of that expression. Dash would not have had to force himself very much to make love to this female, hostage or no. So Melody smiled back, trusting that her expression was as winning.

“I wonder if you could show our distinguished visitor around,” Dash continued. He used just the right tonal emphasis to suggest that he had better things to do himself than squire around such intruders. The hostage had no reason to be suspicious of what was in fact an order. “I would be most grateful.” And the final, calculated hint: Humor this important nuisance, and perhaps I will make love to you again.

“If she doesn’t mind waiting for the end of my watch,” Tiala said. “Half an hour…”

“I don’t mind,” Melody said. “Unless my presence interferes with your job performance.”

Dash made a slight nod to Tiala.

Responsive to the directive, the hostage replied: “No, I’m only keeping an eye on the dials. Actually, it’s dull right now.”

“Very well,” Dash said, smiling again at Melody. Despite her awareness that it was a doubly insincere expression designed to deceive Tiala in the guise of deceiving the visitor, she found herself moved by it. That was something that didn’t exist on Mintaka: a smile. It was like a complex harmony of camaraderie, very pleasant to receive. It was amazing how much could be conveyed on the purely visual level.

The Captain left, followed by his deadly magnet. Now Melody was alone with the hostage. She had to be very careful, for if the sapience that invested this nice-seeming girl were to realize what Melody knew, it would probably kill. The first intergalactic war had made plain that Andromedan agents were pitilessly efficient, virtually without conscience except for their absolute loyalty to their galaxy.

Melody turned to find Tiala’s gaze upon her. Was the hostage assuming that Melody was to be the Captain’s next mistress? Better abate that immediately, or there would never be cooperation! “I’ll be here only a few hours; I really don’t understand space.”

Tiala relaxed. “Understanding space is nothing compared to understanding people.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.” Melody sat down at the little table anchored to the desk. She misjudged the action slightly, and Yael took over suddenly to prevent her from cracking her hip against the rounded corner. All corners were rounded, in space; one never could anticipate when maneuvers would send entities into collision with objects. “Do you play Tarot?” And Melody drew out a deck of cards.

“I have heard of the Temples,” Tiala said. “But I really haven’t had much interest in divination.”

“Oh, there is more to Tarot than divination,” Melody assured her brightly. “The cards can be used for serious study, or for games. Look, let me show you. I fool with these all the time when I have nothing to do.” Absolutely true, yet in this context it might as well have been a lie. For it implied that Tarot was not a serious matter with her. Melody sifted through the cards a bit clumsily with her human fingers and brought out the classical face of one of the Trumps. “For instance, what do you see?”

There was no hesitation. “Communication.”

Melody concealed her startlement. She had never before encountered this particular interpretation. “Now I see a lamp.”

Tiala’s brow wrinkled. “Are you sure?”

“This is the game. Each person sees a different thing. Then we try to reconcile them, and discover which has more validity. It’s an intellectual exercise.”

“I don’t see either one,” Yael remarked.

“It is something of a challenge,” Tiala said, becoming intrigued. “To me, communications beams are quite obvious.”

Communications beams. Of course! On one of the major spheres of Galaxy Andromeda, /, lived a species who communicated by organically generated laser beams. Melody’s own Kirlian ancestor had been an Andromedan transferee of that Sphere who had budded with the revered Flint of Outworld, both in Mintakan hosts, a thousand Solarian years before.

There were half a dozen light beams crisscrossing the face of this card. Because Melody thought and communicated in terms of music, not light, she had never interpreted the picture this way, but obviously there had been / influence in its design, regardless of its supposed origin on pre-Sphere Earth. Here was a direct confirmation of the status of the hostage!

“I see that now,” Melody said even as these thoughts phased through her human brain. “But look at my lamp: It is at the convergence of the beams, an enclosure with a star inside. In fact, it is from where the beams emanate. So is it not a more fundamental image?”

“But the beams do not emanate from it,” Tiala protested. “They are emitted from other eyes; see, they diffuse right past your lamp.”

Other eyes. The light-emitting lenses: eyes of the slash entity. Yes. “So they do. I must concede this round to you, then. But let’s look again. I see… a three-headed dog.” The image did not come naturally to her as it was a Solarian canine, nonexistent in Sphere Mintaka. But she was long familiar with the roots of these cards; even in this restricted vision-style, she was not playing fair. She could draw a hundred images from this single face of this one card, while the hostage had never seen it before.

Tiala concentrated. “Dog. Yes… there in the corner.” She had evidently made a quick delve into her host’s memory to acquaint herself with the image. “And I see… rolling disks.”

Again Melody was surprised. But spurred by necessity she searched… and spotted the figure in the opposite corner. And knew that it was another example of the Andromedan’s special perceptual bias. The figure was actually of a coiled snake—but the / entities moved on great sharp rolling disks. “Ah… I see them now. But they have nowhere to roll except out of the picture, while my dog is coming in toward the center.”

“That’s right,” Tiala agreed. “Yours is the more central image.” She studied the face of the card again. Now Melody was really curious. Would the Andromedan mind see the Solarian sperm cell? /s reproduced by exchanging mating-beams, eye-to-eye as it were. Melody was not clear on the details, but certainly no sperm cell was part of the process. Human entities might lock gazes as a preliminary to the physical interpenetration of copulation; /s might interpenetrate physically as a preliminary to visual copulation. Similar motive, different application.

“A man!” Tiala exclaimed. “It is the figure of a human male man, carrying his light. See, there is his hand! And the dog is beside him.”

“You found it!” Melody said. “You win! That is the figure of the Hermit. The one who walks alone. This is the card of the Hermit, in the ancient Thoth face of Solarian Tarot, said to date from a century pre-Sphere. A picture hidden behind a picture.”

“How clever. This is fun, though you evidently know more about it than I do. Perhaps you should handicap yourself. May we examine another card?”

“Why certainly. Choose any you wish from the deck. There are thirty Major Arcana or Important Secret cards, and—”

She was interrupted by a shudder that ran through the ship. Tiala jumped up to scan her dials. “Hull punctured; atmospheric leakage,” she snapped into her bodyphone. “Section sealed.”

Dash’s voice came back. “Pressure the section! There’s crew in that region.”

Tiala’s hands played over beam-controls, breaking the electronic synapses in a rapid pattern. This would come naturally to a /, Melody realized; she could do her job. “Pressurized. But seal off that leak; we can’t expend our gas indefinitely.”

The lights blinked and changed. Tiala relaxed. “They got it sealed; the leak’s stopped. I wonder what happened?”

“Felt like an explosion,” Melody said. “Is the ship under attack?”

“No attack,” Dash’s voice answered, reminding her that she could never be assured of real privacy aboard this ship. The whole vessel was geared for instant intercommunication. “Detonation in the entry aperture. I suspect someone sabotaged equipment there.”

The entry aperture! That was where her shuttle rested —and its retransfer unit. This meant almost certain delay of her mission and return to Mintaka. But Melody could not express her alarm. Not in the presence of the hostage, not to the myriad ears of the ship. “Maybe I’d better take that cabin after all,” she said. “I’m only in the way at the moment.”

“Yes,” Dash agreed with ungracious readiness. “I shall detail someone to guide you.”

5. Llume the Undulant

*occasion for preparatory briefing*

—is it necessary, ast?—

*only by schedule, dash investigations remain inconclusive there is nothing of new significance to report*

—then let’s fly over it this time wait for something serious not be bound by rote—

*it is a time of great stress*

—yes at times I wish I were back on my £, hauling scentwood, carefree—

*I had understood your species was airborne*

—once, ast, once with increasing brain, we lost our powers of flight now our three wings are employed only for balance and communication transport is provided by the £—

*with victory we shall afford more technology for the home front*

—yes that is our dream ironic that we the most civilized advanced cultures in the galactic cluster, should be confined to the resources of our ancestors in domestic cases, reserving all our technology for spherical matters so readily could we extend that technology throughout andromeda, benefiting all our species, had we but the energy we were thwarted once, but not this time milky way galaxy shall succumb, and its energy shall be ours—

*I still have bad vibrations of another enemy agent like flint of outworld foiling us*

—so do I, ast, so do I segment etamin makes me nervous, though I know that prior interruption was a fluke that is why I assigned one of our best operatives there—

In moments that entity arrived. It was a Polarian, a huge teardrop on a spherical wheel. Melody had assumed that the ship’s complement was entirely human, since this was a Solarian vessel, but of course Polarians were integral to segment government and should be represented in at least token capacity here. There were probably other creatures scattered about, below the top officer level.

“I came to escort Yael of Dragon to her cabin,” the Polarian said, its ball vibrating against the wall. “I am Llume the Undulant, Orderly of the Day.”

Once again Melody concealed her surprise. This was no Polarian manner, despite the form. “I am Yael.”

Llume led the way down the hall, and Melody followed. She really had no choice. But she found herself wrinkling her nose again, conscious of the little tubes inside. She still did not intend to use the secret weapon, but what would she do in an emergency? She did, after all, want to live.

“I’m nervous,” Yael said. “Isn’t it fun!”

“You like being in possible danger?” Melody asked her. “In a ship under fire in space?”

“Oh, yes! This is adventure! Of course it isn’t really danger; it’s just some accident in the hold. No enemy could get through those rings of attackships, especially when they’re protected by your Tarot magic. But what fun pretending!”

Tarot magic? The girl hadn’t grasped the distinction between symbolism and the supernatural. Well, not worth debating. “I wish I had your attitude,” Melody told her. “I have lived a settled life; I don’t like danger or violence.”

“You’re teasing me,” Yael said. “A mind like yours— you’re so much I could never be. It’s like riding a super-coaster in the funpark. All I can do is hang on and enjoy it, knowing that no matter how scary it seems you really do know what you’re doing. You have such terrific competence—”

“Untrue,” Melody said. “I don’t know how—”

“I can’t even imagine the things you can do. Like that card-picture game. All I saw was the three-headed dog. But I could feel your smartness flowing through a hundred channels of my brain, making it work, making me feel like the genius you are…”

The awful thing was that in this girl’s terms, this was true. What to Melody was routine thinking, based on a lifetime’s study and experience, was genius to Yael. And the human girl could never do it on her own; it simply was not in her genetic makeup. She really was, in this respect, inferior.

“But one thing you have that I don’t,” Melody said, trying to come up with a genuinely positive aspect of the situation. “I’m not handsome, in my own form. I’m old, physically infirm, and even in my prime I was no beauty. I never believed it mattered. But now I comprehend what I was missing. You have a physical luster and emotional innocence that—that has me riding the supercoaster [quick flash-concept from the host-mind: tremendous velocity past painted frameworks, sensations of falling, sudden darkness, noise, screams of terrified pleasure, loss of equilibrium, glimpse of a handsome youth Sol male in the next capsule, idle fancies of romance, shocking intimacies, brief freefall like five-second love, abrupt triple gravity, struggle for breath, racing heartbeat] of your body. You are one of the most beautiful entities—”

Three men appeared in the hall. They carried blasters, antipersonnel projectors that could scorch living tissue without damaging the equipment of the ship. “Hands up!” the leader bawled.

The Polarian rolled to a stop. “I have no hands.”

The men ignored that. “What are you doing here?”

“I am conducting our guest, the offspring of a Solarian Minister, to her compartment,” Llume said.

“Smartwheel dino,” the man muttered to his companions. Then, to Llume: “On what authority?”

“On Captain’s directive.”

That made him pause. He looked at Melody. Quickly she lifted her two arms, having ascertained from the host-mind that this was a signal of capitulation that would prevent immediate attack. She felt the material of her blouse draw tight across her mammaries.

All three men looked at her chest. One pursed his lips and made a semimusical trill, a whistle.

“What’s your name, hourglass?” the leader demanded. An hourglass: a primitive device for keeping time, appearing as a symbol in the Tarot. Sand funneled through a narrow aperture at a controlled rate. A reference to the appearance of the host-body? Surely not a complimentary one!

“I am Yael of Dragon,” Melody said.

The man’s tongue poked out of his mouth and traveled around the rim of lips, once. “Must be all right,” he muttered.

“More than all right!” a companion agreed.

The leader shook his head as though clearing it of dust. “Look, sorry about this; just following orders. We’re supposed to clear the halls of personnel. You get on to your cabin.”

Melody lowered her arms. The men’s eyes watched the fabric of her blouse relax and settle with the mammaries. “Thank you,” she said.

“Maybe sometime we’ll meet again,” the leader said.

“The hell, schnook!” Yael replied voicelessly.

“This is possible,” Melody agreed verbally. And to Yael: “About supercoasters—did you see that entity’s eyes?”

“He was really looking!” Yael agreed.“ ’Course you put your arms too far back, so you nearly busted the strap.”

Melody caught the image: Once Solarian females had used tight bands called “bras” about their chests to make their mammaries stand up.

“Strange,” the Polarian murmured against the wall. “Weaponed personnel are not normally permitted in the passages. We must move on. Please swim this way.”

“You are a transfer from Sphere Spica, then,” Melody said as she followed. “Not a native Polarian.” Spica was a water world, represented in the Tarot by the Suit of Liquid, or Cups, while the Polarians identified with the Suit of Solid, or Disks. Much of the old Tarot had passed into segment idiom, and many entities used the associations without knowing their origin—as she had already observed in the shapes of the ships of the fleet.

“Of course. I am an Undulant, as I said. I cannot swim on solid, so I utilize a solidbound host. You are also a transferee?”

“Yes.” Melody considered momentarily whether she could trust this entity, and decided not to risk it. Only the Captain knew her nature and mission here, and he had not been informed of her Mintakan identity. Solarians had a certain fetish for secrecy, but considering the nature of the Andromedan threat, secrecy seemed to be in order. When body and mind could be taken over and made hostage to an alien aura without warning or consent, no information in any mind was safe. There were only two reasonable defenses: an extremely high aura, such as the Captain’s or her own, or fairly thorough mental ignorance of critical matters.

Llume halted abruptly. “There is a magnet guarding the passage ahead,” the Polarian said.

Melody needed no further caution. “Will it attack us?”

“Uncertain. Better to have its master admonish it, before we attempt to pass. The visibility of human milk-mounds will not distract this entity.”

Melody grimaced inwardly. Everybody seemed to notice Yael’s mammaries.

The Polarian/Spican extended her tail to a stud high in the wall and depressed it. Melody remembered that the appendage was termed tail for the female and trunk for the male Polarian, and this was a female host. But Spicans had no fixed sex. There were rather three fixed forms whose role in reproduction depended purely on circumstance. In this regard there were strong similarities to the Mintakan system. Perhaps Llume had taken the female role most recently before transfer, so had come to a female host; on another occasion she might manifest as a male. Melody was sure the very notion of sex identity change would be deeply upsetting to Solarians, yet it was quite sensible. What rational entity would want to be confined all its life to one aspect of sexuality?

“I would!” Yael replied, embarrassed.

Which merely went to illustrate the limitations of form. The chained lady could not even conceive of freedom!

“I’m not chained!” Yael protested hotly. “I like being a girl. Can’t you understand that?”

“Llume to Captain,” Llume said, spinning her ball neatly against the stud.

“Captain occupied,” a voice responded after a moment. “Alternate?”

“We are blocked by a magnet, master uncertain.”

“For that you must have the Captain. Ship is on curfew.”

“Please attempt to reach Captain, then. We are unable to honor curfew, owing to presence of magnet. I courier daughter of Minister; cannot risk harm to visitor.”

“Remain in place until contacted.” They waited, but after several minutes there was no callback.

“Must be more trouble than we know,” Melody observed.

“It is unusual,” Llume agreed. “May we converse?”

“I’d love to. I’d like to know more about Spica.”

“And I about the Music Sphere.”

Music Sphere—that could only mean Mintaka! How had Llume learned of this? Or was she guessing? “But first,” Melody said, “I’d like to know how these magnets function. They frighten me somewhat.”

“They are intended to,” Llume said. “They evolved on a densely metallic world with very strong magnetic fields and fluxes. They moved by generating polar intensities, attracting themselves to metallic objects with great force, then shifting the pole in the manner of an electric engine.”

“Electromagnetic propulsion in a living body,” Melody said. “This is new to me.”

“New to most entities who haven’t been aboard military vessels,” Llume agreed. “They were brought into space only in the past century or so, and Solarians have not been eager to spread information about them. Until recently they seemed to be merely a planetary anomaly; they could not survive on other worlds because there was insufficient metal and fuel.”

“Fuel?”

“Their mode of operation requires much power. They consume concentrated organic energy substances, such as petroleum and coal. They vaporize it or powder it, then combust it, converting virtually all the heat into magnetic energy. The field of a well-fed magnet becomes intense.”

“I noticed,” Melody agreed. “They would be associated with the Suit of Aura, no doubt. Which is an intriguing notion in its own right.”

“Finally, an intelligent Solarian realized that these magnets were ideally suited to habitation within metal spaceships,” Llume continued. “The long clear passages, and the temptation of unlimited fuel—”

“Instant guard dogs,” Melody finished. “Yes, I see it now. Not too intelligent, and unable ever to leave the environment of the ship—this is guaranteed loyalty! All you have to do is feed your magnet.”

“Their nature is distressingly Solarian, despite their shape and mode,” Llume said. “They are the ultimate thrust-creatures, objects of terror. They are largely invulnerable to conventional weapons even when directly struck, and they have such speed and power—”

“My sentiments exactly,” Melody said. She had learned much of what she needed to know about the magnets, but it was hardly comforting. If a magnet should get confused and attack her, what possible defense did she have? “May we communicate privately?”

Llume placed her ball against Melody’s human throat. It vibrated gently. “This cannot be heard beyond your flesh,” the Polarian/Spican said, the words sounding like a voice in the brain. “If you will subvocalize, it will be private, unless there is a spy-beam on us. I do not think that is the case.”

“Thank you,” Melody said, speaking almost as silently as she did to Yael. She was now aware of Llume’s aura, a really strong one of about one hundred, very attractive. “How did you identify my native Sphere?”

“Alien cultures are my avocation. There are typical nuances of expression and viewpoint. Yours conform to the pattern of Mintaka. But you conceal it very well. No one not trained as I have been would recognize this, and in some moments your reactions are so perfectly human that I marvel.”

Those moments would be when Yael’s reactions came through. This was a most observant Spican! “That’s a relief. You read my mannerisms, just as I read your lack of circularity.” Melody brought out the Hermit card from her deck, the same face Tiala had seen. “What do you see here?”

Llume ran her ball over the card’s surface. Polarians lacked sharply focused vision, as did Mintakans. The designs of these cards were in trace relief, however, so they could be read by tactile means. The Polarian ball was a very sensitive communication organ. “This is a stylized Undulant swimming toward a star. I believe it is myself.” The sperm cell: it was in fact a tiny swimming creature, in its element! That was what would naturally strike the attention of a true Spican first. “Strange,” Melody said. “I see communication.”

They were in physical contact; Melody was aware of the fluctuations in the other entity’s aura. There was no significant deviation in response to this loaded remark.

“I suppose a star can be considered so,” Llume offered. “It bears light that all may see.”

“I mean the beams.”

“The beams?” Still no ripple. Llume was genuinely perplexed. “Do they form a significant pattern?”

One more test. “It occurs to me that we may be related,” Melody said. “Do you have any alien ancestors?”

“Yes. I have two. A thousand years ago, Flint of Outworld, a Solarian transferee to our home planet, raped a / agent of Andromeda. He had manifested as an Impact, she as an Undulant, and together with Sissix the Sibilant as catalyst they generated the infant Liana the Undulant. I descend from her. We are most interested in genealogy in Spican waters.”

“We also, in Mintakan fields,” Melody said. “I descend from the same two aliens—manifesting as Mintakans. But my loyalty is to Sphere Mintaka.”

“And mine to Sphere Spica—and Galaxy Milky Way,” Llume said.

“Our auras are of the same family,” Melody said. “Very close, the closest affinity I have ever encountered. We are as sisters.”

“Yes. Our aural linkage is much more intimate than our physical ancestry, though it is amazing that we are related.”

Melody chuckled. “Illusion. In the thousand Sol years since Flint of Outworld thrust his favors so widely, there has been ample opportunity for every member of each of our Spheres to become related through him. A brief calculation will show that if we allow twenty-five years for an average generation, there would be forty generations in that period. If each female or equivalent produced two offspring, the descendants would now number approximately one trillion entities. Since the average Sphere supports about a hundred billion sapients—”

Now Llume laughed—an intriguing effect, in its silent vibration. “And I supposed I was so special, possessing those illustrious historical ancestors! The remarkable ones are those who do not share this ancestry!”

“On the other hand, the nongenetic affinity of aura is quite significant,” Melody said. “I have encountered no Mintaken aura as intense as yours, so closely allied to my own.”

“Perhaps we are guided in some fashion,” Llume said. “I do not subscribe readily to coincidence.”

“Coincidence would have it that at certain stages like entities will meet, as well as unlike entities,” Melody said. “This ship represents a deliberate concentration of extremely intense auras, and some will naturally be related.”

“For one who subscribes to Tarot, you are very practical,” Llume observed delicately.

“Tarot is practical,” Melody assured her.

“Apologies; no disparagement of religious views intended.”

Another miscue, but not worth correcting. “Accepted. I believe I can accept you as a genuine Milky Way galaxy entity.”

“Of course! And I accept you. Why—”

“There are hostages among us.”

“Hostages?”

“Involuntary hosts, controlled by Andromedan auras. I am here to nullify them.”

Now Llume’s aura veered wildly. “Andromedans! Aboard this ship?”

“Yes. Tiala of Oceana is one; it has been verified. She is a / entity of Andromeda. There may be others. I suspect that is the source of this present commotion. Will you work with me?”

“I must ask the Captain first,” Llume said uncertainly. “I never guessed—hostages!”

“By all means ask the Captain. But not over the ship’s phone system.”

Llume laughed again at Melody’s throat. “Of course not! I am not quite that ignorant.” She looked down the hall at the magnet. Melody could tell she was looking by her attitude; her skin changed color and brightness slightly. Large objects were visible to Polarians, and of course this Spican intellect had Polarian-host talents. “But assuming the Captain approved, how could I help? I don’t know how to identify a hostage.”

“I would like to tell some fortunes,” Melody said.

Again the aura flexed. “I do not comprehend Mintakan humor.”

“Of course not. No Spican would. Or Solarian. Or Polarian or Canopian or Nathian. But especially, no Andromedan.”

“No Andromedan,” Llume said, catching on. “You can identify an Andromedan through the Tarot?”

“I believe so. With your cooperation. If you can tell a transferee by his home-Sphere mannerisms, you should have a good notion who our suspects are. If you can bring them to me without suspicion—”

“Now I understand! This is how you verified that Tiala was a hostage?”

“She was already known to be a hostage. I used the Tarot merely to distract her, but found it to be a better tool than I had imagined. As long as I’m confined to this ship, this is a worthwhile application of my skill.” For Melody now doubted she would get off this ship as rapidly as had been promised. Not if it was infiltrated by a number of hostages.

“I agree. If there are many more hostages aboard, we must neutralize them promptly.”

“No. We must identify them—without their knowing it. Otherwise we place ourselves in peril.”

“But if we let them go—”

“An enemy known is an enemy neutralized—when the appropriate time comes.”

“Yes, you make sense. Probably that detonation in the hold was the work of a hostage.”

Melody wondered about that. No one on the ship besides herself and Captain Boyd had known her mission. How could a hostage have struck so rapidly and accurately?

“Captain to Llume,” the shipvoice said, startling Melody out of her reverie.

Llume’s tail went up to answer. “Awaiting.”

“All magnets have been advised not to molest our guest, Yael of Dragon. Pass without hindrance.”

“Understood. Captain, may I—”

But the connection had already been broken.

Llume made an elegant boneless shrug. “I was about to inquire whether I could courier you for the duration; I could not have been more specific at this time. Yet he did not say negative.”

Melody laughed. “That’s right. I heard him fail to negate.”

They moved on down the hall, Melody walking, Llume rolling, neither using her natural mode of travel. The magnet hovered in place, ignoring them. But Melody’s human flesh crawled as she passed it, and not merely because of Yael’s terror. A living cannonball…

“I suspect the bomb was placed aboard the shuttle before it left Outworld,” Dash said. “It was intended to destroy both the equipment—which it did—and the operative.”

“The operative,” Melody said, feeling cold. “Me?”

“You. For this reason I feel it would be better for you to remain aboard this ship for the time being. Evidently someone on the Imperial Planet is aware of your mission, so you are not safe there. Until that entity is located and neutralized, you are safest here where your identity is unknown.”

“Yes…” Melody agreed. She had already decided to remain for a while, but the notion that a direct attempt had been made on her life was appalling, and it unnerved her. But for an accident of timing, that bomb…

The Captain put his human arm around her shoulders. Suddenly she was crying in very human style against his shoulder. “Oh, Dash—I’m afraid!”

“Perfectly normal reaction. But there is no need to be concerned—now. I have established very thoroughly that no attempt on your life originated here. I regret I had no chance to explain what I was doing, before, but of course I could not be sure until we had investigated. I regret that the equipment was destroyed, but that can be replaced in due course. All is well so long as you are well, and I shall ensure that you remain well.”

He addressed his magnet. “Slammer, you will accompany Yael of Dragon until further notice, protecting her from any threat whatsoever. Understood?”

The magnet bobbed.

Oh, no! “Captain, I’d really rather not have the magnet—”

“The magnet is your friend,” the Captain assured her. “Pay attention.” He pointed to a metal chair anchored to the floor of Melody’s cabin. “I believe that object intends harm to Yael of—”

A blast of air rocked them back. The chair exploded. And Slammer hovered back where he had been, the heat of sudden motion dissipating from his shell.

Only Dash’s strong arm around her had prevented Melody from being blown over by the impact of the magnet’s motion. The chair was a flattened mass of partly melted metal. Yet it had been done so quickly that Melody had not even seen it happen.

The Captain gave her a final squeeze and let her go. “No one will even think of harming you now,” he said. “You are safe. Believe.”

Melody believed.

“I was always a sucker for fortunes,” the Chief of Coordinations said.

“You must understand, I make no claims for the supernatural,” Melody informed him, tapping the Cluster deck lightly. She had combed out her hair so that it was long and loose, parted in the center and coursing down in brown streams just outside her eyes, in the fashion of the ancient human witches. Yael had been delighted, and had offered pointers on details.

“Well, as long as it doesn’t take too long,” he said. “I do have other business.”

Melody leaned forward carefully, holding the deck in both hands so that her arms pressed against the sides of her breasts, making them bulge out of the artfully low-cut décolletage. “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” she murmured.

His eyes did a little male-animal dance upon her cleavage. “Oh, no inconvenience. Take your time.”

“Do you know your Significator? The card that represents you?”

He glanced at her face momentarily, brow wrinkling. “Is there a card named Hath?”

She smiled. “I don’t believe so. What is your planet of origin?”

“Conquest,” he said.

“Well, Hath of Conquest, let’s look through these cards and see if any of the faces reflect your home. I am not familiar with it, so you will have to make the selection.” She showed him the first of the Major Arcana, numbered Zero in the deck. “This we call the Fool, though he is not really foolish. It is just that his tremendous vision outreaches his footing.” The picture showed a young man about to step off a cliff. She flexed the face, bringing up an alternate. “This is the same key, but in this aspect he is called the Nameless One. There are over a hundred versions of each card; I have only a representative sampling here.” She flexed it to the third face.

“No, wait,” Hath said. “That second one; I believe that will do.”

“Oh?” She flexed it back. “Why?”

“The arthropod. This typifies my world.”

“There are spiders on your world?”

“No. But related creatures, yes. We cultivate them; they are our primary food. So arthropods are most important to us.”

“That makes sense,” Melody agreed. “Very well. This is your Significator, and we shall use this facet of the deck. It is called the New Tarot, though it is not new any more. It was one of the decks created in honor of the so-called Aquarian Age of astrological Earth. It has been modified to fit the standard hundred card format, but otherwise it is reasonably authentic.”

She continued talking, careful to provide him a continuing view of her front so as to hold his attention, but her thoughts wandered. In fact, she had read of Planet Conquest, as it had a certain historical value. It had been the first human extra-Solar colony, the start of Sphere Sol.

A million Solarians had been moved by matter transmission at phenomenal energy expense to the system of Gienah, sixty-three light-years distant from Sol, there to colonize a supposedly ideal virgin world. But the preliminary survey had overlooked a critical element of the planet’s ecology, and it had very nearly wiped out the colony in the first year. The near-fiasco had been hushed up by the Solarian bureaucracy, but it was only a fraction of the disasters that beset the “Fool” period of Earth’s history. How aptly the Tarot reflected that situation! Yet, Melody reminded herself, the vision of Paul of Tarot also stemmed from that conflux…

Of course, such information was also available to the Andromedans. So if a spy or hostage wanted to claim origin on a planet of Sphere Sol, this would do. And a hostage entity would have no reason to pretend; it could draw from its host’s mind. She would be wasting her time trying to trap it by means of misinformation. In fact, a person could have a great deal of misinformation about his home planet, since of course most people here in the fleet would be second- or third-generation émigrés whose ancestors had shipped at half-light speed from those planets. A man could call a planet “home” as a matter of cultural pride, when he had never been there. This was another reason it was generally considered that the only sure way to identify a given entity was by aural analysis. “Now these hundred cards are arranged in order,” Melody was saying meanwhile. She spread them in her hands, not forgetting to give her impressive bust another jiggle. “First the Major Arcana, the important secrets, as it were, all thirty of them. Actually there are even more than that, but they don’t all have separate cards. This one, the Ghost, has fifteen alternate keys. It really stands for all the missing secrets, whose number may well be infinite. So the full extent of the theoretical deck—”

“I don’t really understand about such things,” Hath said. “And I do have duties elsewhere. Would you mind doing the reading now?”

So her bosom would not hold him forever. Well, he had a typical human reaction. Few sapients were sincerely interested in Tarot; they only wanted a slice of their future handed to them conveniently. This would not be a good reading. The querist really had to understand the cards for that. But then, the reading was not her purpose. “Please shuffle the cards now,” she told him, handing him the pack.

His eyebrow lifted. “I have to do the work?”

“You have to do the work. You may not be conscious of it, but as you shuffle the cards you are arranging them in an order that satisfies you. You determine their final order. I only lay them out and help interpret. There is nothing supernatural about it; the cards merely reflect your will.”

“I know you have to say that,” he said, his eyes straying at last from her décolletage to her legs, which she had disposed artistically to the side of the table. “There are laws, aren’t there? You can’t claim anything about spiritual influences, but they’re there all the same, right?” He shuffled the cards.

A born sucker; she had known the type in Sphere Mintaka. They wanted to believe in fantastic agencies, not in mundane reality. The truth was that modern space science had far more effect on most entities’ lives than any possible spiritual agency.

“I only help you interpret the cards,” she insisted, knowing he would take this as confirmation of his conjecture. “No spirits exist except as you have conjured them.”

He returned the deck. Melody dealt the first card of the reading. It was the Five of Serpents of the New Tarot, with the five snakes radiating out from the points of a five-pointed star. Too bad; these Minor Arcana were not complex enough to evoke the reactions she needed. What would she do if the whole layout turned out to be like this?

But she tried. “What does this suggest to you, Hath?”

He hardly glanced at it. “The patina of reproduction, of course.”

Melody forced her mouth to work. “Of course.” Was he teasing her or was this a completely alien reaction?

She dealt another card: Unity, equivalent to The Lovers in the more conventional decks. It could be considered as representing the commencement of a new way, though of course it was far more complex than that.

“There is the first shoot entering the nutrient globe,” Hath said. “Ready to fission in that egg into the five sexes that will consume the body of the female entity laid out as food, before emerging as shown in the prior card,” he said. He looked up. “I’m surprised they are permitted to print such graphic material.”

“Sometimes they do have trouble with local censors,” Melody said somewhat feebly. For she had abruptly identified the applicable culture, the only one she knew of that had five sexes. Sphere * of Andromeda.

By the time she completed the reading, she was certain. Hath was another hostage. She gave him a nice “fortune” and let him go. But her human heart was pounding.

Her first Tarot testing had been a success. But she was not precisely satisfied with its verdict. If a random sampling of personnel had so easily turned up another agent of Andromeda, how many more were aboard this ship?

Melody was tired, and so was her host. She had been awake and active for some time, and had experienced more new and unsettling things than ever before in her life. She had to relax.

“Let’s take us a subsonic dense and estivation,” she told Yael.

“What?” Bewilderment.

“Oh—sorry, I forget. I mean a hot shower and sleep.”

“It must be some life, on Mintaka,” Yael remarked.

“It is some life here, girl!”

Yael laughed, pleased. “It’s my dream come true. I hope we’re stuck here forever.”

Incurable lust for adventure! “Very well. Why don’t you strip us down and take us our shower, and I’ll tag along for the ride.”

Incredulous thrill. “You’ll let me run the whole body? Even though I’m only the host?”

“The Lord God of Hosts is with you yet,” Melody agreed. Then, feeling the instant reaction: “I’m not ridiculing your religion! It is possible to love and laugh at the same time, you know.” She was afraid that would not be enough, but Yael’s mind brightened. Another advantage of lesser intelligence: it was easily satisfied. Melody’s actual attitude toward Solarian religion was more complex and skeptical than the human girl could appreciate.

Yael took over the body, hesitantly at first, then with greater sureness. Melody had to school herself to let go, becoming completely limp in intent, so that it was possible. They/she began to shrug out of her blouse, letting the fabric tear down the front and back. As it was recyclable, it would be conveyed to the ship’s clothing unit and merged with similar refuse. The oven would melt it down, and the centrifuge would spin out the dirt, and the jet-molds would squirt new clothes on order into the system. Little was wasted in space—apart from the fact that the whole space effort was a waste. Monstrous fleets that could never do battle…

Yael stopped, her bosom half-bared. “The magnet!” she said.

Melody looked where the girl was gazing—the easiest of things to do, in the circumstance, since the eyes were under host-control. “Slammer’s all right; he’s just hovering.”

“That’s just it. He’s watching.”

Now Melody laughed. “Of course. He’s protecting us. With these hostages around, that’s just as well.”

“But he’ll see—you know.”

Melody had to work this out before responding. Solarians wore clothes, lest the males be sexually stimulated by the sight of the female torso, and impregnate… but she hardly needed to rehearse that fact again. “He’s not human. He’s a magnet. Breasts mean nothing to him— not even so fine a pair as yours.”

“How do we know?”

That stopped her. “Well, it does seem unlikely. Anyway, he has no eyes.”

Yael was reassured. “That’s right! He can’t see!” And she stripped away the rest of the blouse and skirt and stuffed them in the recycle chute.

Actually, Melody realized, the magnet could see. He merely used a different system. The human body’s presence and density distorted its magnetic environment slightly, so that Slammer could locate it precisely. Clothing made little difference. Yael would be shocked if she realized that the magnet could probably perceive her most intimate internal functions.

“We’d better use the john,” Yael said, heading for the refuse cubicle. Then halted again. “This is an open slot. And the magnet’s right here.”

So the action of elimination possessed different scruples from the mere exposure of flesh! “All creatures have natural functions,” Melody pointed out.

“That means it understands. It’s male, and its watching. Or listening. Or something.”

“That last covers the situation best,” Melody said. Odd that a function that both male and female Solarians practiced similarly should have greater social restrictions than one that involved sexual differentiation. Mintakans were not that way: they were quite open about intake and elimination. Sexuality seemed to extend well beyond the mechanisms of sex, here. She had no idea. “We can tie a curtain to conceal the seat.”

“Yes!” That solved the problem. The Solarian girl was locked on vision; the curtain made no difference to Slammer, but relieved her problem of propriety.

After the toilet, the shower. This already had a curtain, to prevent the fine spray of water from splashing out wastefully. Slammer hovered close, but did not intrude within the shower itself. The magnet seemed to be satisfied to maintain a distance of about one human body-length. It hovered closer when potential enemies were about, hung farther away when things seemed secure, as now. He was an excellent bodyguard.

Something about that very proficiency bothered Melody, but she couldn’t quite place her objection.

“I’ve checked six officers,” Melody said subvocally to Llume’s ball. “And all six are hostages. High-Kirlian Andromedans masquerading as loyal Segment Etamin entities.”

“I am dismayed, not surprised,” Llume replied. “I had noted some possibilities, once put on alert. This is why I brought these entities to you first. Is it time to take the matter to the Captain?”

“Maybe,” Melody agreed. “But I don’t know how he’ll react. These are his trusted officers, after all. If he refuses to believe, it could be instant disaster, six against one. They’d kill him. I’d better play it pianissimo until I’m sure.”

“Yes.” The Spican, too, was uneasy. “We swim through treacherous waters.”

But if they didn’t swim, Melody thought, they would soon sink.

6. Chaining the Lady

*action hour revised approaches*

—we must delay it a little longer segment knyfh remains in doubt we must improve our situation there—

*quadpoint will object*

—droppings on quadpoint! let him hammer out his own tunnel I coordinate this effort—

Melody had been finding so many hostages she was beginning to wonder if there was anyone aboard who was not a hostage.

It was her off-shift, not that she really had shifts. Llume was sleeping. Spicans might not sleep, but the Polarian host did. Melody would normally be sleeping too, but now she was awake and restless. Should she tell the Captain about the hostages? When? How?

She garbed herself in reasonably nonprovocative attire and poked her nose into the hall. No one was in sight. “Slammer, let’s take a walk,” she said. “Lead the way—” She broke off. Where did she want to go? She really had no destination.

“I wonder where March lives?” Yael remarked innocently. “We haven’t seen him since we left the shuttle, and so much has happened… I hope he wasn’t hurt in the explosion.”

“The crew’s quarters!” Melody said with sudden inspiration. She might be able to make a quick survey for hostages.

Slammer moved down the hall. Melody followed, pleased to have the experiment work: the magnet could and would take her where she wanted to go.

The officer’s section of the ship seemed to be sealed off, a separate world, yet there was far more to this vessel of space than that. The whole sword-handle was almost a Solarian mile, 1/186,000 of a light-second, in diameter, and several miles long. Much of it was taken up with supplies and machinery and huge stores of emergency fuel, but even the residential levels were partitioned. Toward the end of the handle, away from the blade, was the crew ring, much larger than the officer ring. Crewmen did not even pass through the officer ring when on duty; they took light or heavy gravity bypasses. Melody regarded this as a form of discrimination. After all, March was just as much an individual entity as was Captain Dash.

Slammer brought her to an airlock. “An airlock—here in the middle of the ship?” she asked, surprised. But she saw that the pressure gauge indicated no differential, so she waved one finger over the OPEN panel. The barrier slid aside, and she stepped through.

A smart young man stepped up, saluting. “Sir?”

“Oh, I’m not an officer,” Melody said. “Just a wandering visitor.”

He looked at her again. “With a magnet, sir?”

“Well, the Captain assigned—a courtesy gesture, so I wouldn’t get into too much trouble.”

He politely let that stand unchallenged. “And your business here?”

“I… thought I’d…” Would it get March in trouble if she gave his name? She decided not to risk it yet. “I’d like to take a look at the crew’s quarters, just from curiosity. I am very new to space. Is this permitted?”

“Is this an official or unofficial visit, sir?”

“Unofficial. I have no authority, no rank. I’m just… I don’t want to be any trouble…”

“Lagniappe?” he said.

“Lan of Yap? I’m afraid I don’t understand…”

He smiled. “Lagniappe. One word, not a place. It signifies—sir, you really don’t understand?”

“I really don’t. Have I given offense?”

His eyes traveled over her body, seeing what her demure clothing could not conceal. It was amazing the persistence with which the Solarian male observed the Solarian female. “Sir, there is no way you could give offense. If you will appoint me as your escort, and so advise the magnet, I shall be happy to explain and demonstrate.” He smiled again. “Lan of Yap—that’s clever.”

“Slammer, I appoint this man as my escort through the crew’s quarters of this ship,” Melody said to the magnet. Slammer nodded agreeably. Melody’s initial fear of the magnet had rapidly faded. Cannonballs weren’t dangerous unless someone activated the cannon.

The man spoke into the intercom. “Replacement to Officer’s Lock number Two,” he said crisply. “Lagniappe.” Then, to Melody: “It will only be a moment, sir. Please don this cover.” And he handed her a somewhat wrinkled brown jacket.

Perplexed, Melody put it on. The young man removed his hat, revealing bright yellow hair. “Now if you will give me your name…”

“Yael,” she said. “Yael of—”

“That suffices. I am… Gary. No more need be said.”

Another crewman arrived. “Take over, Sam,” Gary said. “I’m going Lan of Yap.”

The other smiled. “Lan of Yap.” Then he peered at Melody, his eyes seeming to strike right through the jacket. “With her? You lucky—”

Gary cut him off with a lifted hand. “Carry on, E-Two.” Then he took Melody firmly by the arm. “This way, Yael.”

As they walked down the passage, with Slammer floating sedately behind, Gary explained. “Officers have to act like officers, because that’s what they are. We enlisted men have more freedom to be ourselves. We fight, we cry, we laugh, we have wild parties, we goof off. So while the officers go slowly crazy, we enlisted men get along pretty well. When an officer can’t take any more of the gung-ho, he comes down here, off the record, and takes off his rank, and we let him in on some of the fun. We don’t recognize him, we don’t call him ‘sir,’ we just help him let go. It’s like a night on the town. No one ever says a thing about it afterward; it just doesn’t exist, as far as official ship’s protocol is concerned. It’s that little extra in his life, the lagniappe, the gift we give beyond the call of duty, no obligation… know what I mean?”

“Sounds like fun,” Melody agreed, though she was not entirely clear about the rationale.

“More than fun. Lagniappe is the way of space. You do a little something extra for your neighbor, and in turn he does it for you, because we all are here in space and there’s nothing else but the ship. If we don’t get along here, we don’t get along at all.”

“What do you do, Gary, when you aren’t… getting along?”

“I’m a foilman,” he said. “When I’m not pulling guard duty. I put on my suit and get out there and clean the blade. It gets pitted and holed and dirty from space dust, you know, and—”

“You go outside the ship?” she asked, surprised.

“Sure; that’s where the solar collection foils are. If we just let them go, next thing you know collection efficiency will be down ten percent, then twenty percent. We need that light-power to keep us energy self-sufficient.

“Yes, of course. All the ships have solar collectors. I saw that as I came in on the shuttle. But Gary, the ship is turning, isn’t it, and centrifugal force is more than one gravity at the outer shell. How do you stay on?”

“That’s what makes it a challenge,” he said, inflating a little. “I have magnetic soles on my boots, of course, and a safety line, but it’s a bit like hanging by your toes. And I can’t even do that on the sword-foil; it’d tear. So I have to use a support sling.”

“But if anything breaks—”

“I go swinging out into space,” he said. “That’s why I’m careful, very careful.” He guided her into a lounge. “The job isn’t bad, in fact I like it, but it takes a special kind of man. One who gets a bit paranoid about carelessness.”

Five crewmen looked up. Rather, three human crewmen looked, and one translucent jellylike Antarian quivered, and a jumper from Mirzam angled an antenna. Evidently there was quite a bit of physical travel between Spheres, for Mirzam was about eight hundred light-years from Etamin. Maybe some entities had been mattermitted on a special mission, then left at Outworld to fend for themselves because of the enormous expense of the return trip. If the contingents representing other Spheres were staffed by Sphere-natives, this was another example of the tremendous waste of energy involved in the military—all for the sake of show. If all that energy were only used for more positive purposes—but probably that issue would never be settled. Waste, thy name is Empire, she thought. “This is Yael,” Gary said. “Lan of Yap.” The others smiled in their separate fashions, enjoying the mispronunciation. In turn they introduced themselves: “Adam.” “Joyce.” “Manfred.” “Slither.” “Bounce.” Melody was glad to find an integrated crew, regardless of the waste. The officership was almost entirely Solarian, but it seemed any entity could join the crew. There would be plenty of Solarians and Polarians in the crews of other-Sphere ships, too, serving under other-Sphere officers. She was sure this was a deliberate policy, to prevent prejudices from arising between Spheres of the segment. Of course some adjustments had to be made, as the atmospheres of all planets were not interchangeable. She could detect a faint odor in the air here; presumably something had been added for the benefit of one of the other species. And the Mirzam entity seemed to have a mask of sorts covering part of its face, much as a Solarian would carry an oxygen inhaler in an oxygen-deficient atmosphere.

“Let’s have a party,” Gary said.

There was a flurry of activity. Slither the Antarian cleared a table by englobing its surface in animate jelly. When the flesh withdrew, the table was spotless. The three Solarians fetched food and drink. Bounce of Mirzam remained to entertain the visitor. Melody felt a certain affinity to him, because she was an equivalently alien creature, and Sphere Mirzam bordered Sphere Mintaka. She was sorry she could not reveal her origin to him. “We do not receive many Lans currently.” He spoke by vibrating one antenna against another, and his height varied as his legs extended hydraulically from their stout tube-sockets. Mirzam was a jumping society, she knew; those three legs were made to deliver a lot of lift, and to absorb a lot of shock.

“Oh?” Melody inquired, accepting a squeeze-bottle of greenish liquid. In space, potable liquids were never poured; one never knew when a condition of null-gravity might occur. This drink had a sweet but strong flavor. “I understood this was a regular exchange.”

“It used to be,” Gary said. “But in the last two weeks no one has come except Skot, and the tabs have not been honored. Something funny going on. I have a message overdue from my buddy aboard the Trey of Swords. Usually Hath or somebody slips it in the chute during slack-time, but…”

So that was the nature of the exchange. Officers did little unofficial favors for crew, in return for a few hours’ “anonymous” relaxation that she suspected had something to do with intoxicants and amenable female Solarians. All off the record, of course. Getting along, in a fleet that never put in to planet.

And the hostages were fouling up the system. Because a hostage was not the same entity as the host. Hath of * had different priorities from Hath of Conquest. What was important to a member of a two-sexed species was not important to a member of a five-sexed species. So far no one but Melody knew the situation. And how would she make it known?

She was beginning to feel dizzy. “The drink,” Yael said in answer to Melody’s confusion. “Alcoholic.” She giggled. “Drink it slow, or you might wind up getting impregnated.”

Melody looked at the drink, startled. “An intoxicant!” Yet why was she surprised? She had known from her host’s memory that such things were common, and had reasoned that they applied to this lagniappe custom. She had merely failed to relate her intellectual comprehension to herself.

Suddenly a buzzer sounded in a rapid series of bursts and pauses. Gary looked up, dismayed. “That’s my call—emergency. It would have to come right now!”

“We shall see to your friend,” Bounce of Mirzam said, jumping up. Literally. His feet left the deck. “Like pogo sticks,” Yael commented, observing the way his three legs pistoned.

“No, I’ll go with you,” Melody said quickly to Gary. She was glad for an excuse to stop taking the intoxicant, and she didn’t want to have to explain to Slammer about a new escort; the magnet might get confused.

“Can’t do,” Gary said. “I’ve got to go hullside.” He started off down the hall.

Melody ran after him. “I’d like to go hullside!”

He whirled on her, harried. “You’re crazy!—no offense, sir.”

But she stayed with him, and Slammer stayed with her. “I won’t get in the way!”

“I never should have gotten relieved from watch,” he muttered. “Then I wouldn’t have been on call.” He jumped into a chute, disappearing from view.

Melody hesitated, then followed him, sliding down through darkness. This crew chute was smaller and faster than the officer’s access she had used before. Finally she leveled off in heavy gravity. She was, she judged, near the outer hull, her weight now about half again its normal amount. This was not a pleasant sensation; it dragged on her internal organs as well as her limbs, and her mammaries were uncomfortable. Although it was not as bad as the shuttle deceleration had been, she knew there was no immediate relief, and she had to stay on her feet.

Slammer arrived just after her. He did not seem discommoded. She wondered what the surface gravity was like on his home world. Maybe it made no difference to him.

Other crewmen were popping out of the chute. Gary was already stepping into his spacesuit. It opened like an ancient Solarian “iron maiden” torture device; fortunately, it did not possess the internal spikes. As he entered it, it closed on him, locking automatically. Melody marched up to a similar suit that seemed to be her size and stepped in. She had a surge of claustrophobia as it closed, but fought it off. She did want to see the outside.

Air filled the suit. She found she could move her arms and legs readily; the suit was so cleverly articulated that it presented no hindrance. It was not one of the invisible “second skin” suits, but a rugged heavy-duty workman’s job suitable for use in the special conditions of deep space.

Apparently Gary had forgotten her in his preoccupation with the emergency, and the others didn’t realize she didn’t belong. She knew she was taking a risk, but at least it was a release from the growing problem of the hostages. These people were not hostages; their auras were so low they were not even aware of her Kirlian nature. That was in itself valuable to know. As far as she could tell there had been no intrusion of hostages among the crew, unlike the heavily infiltrated officership. If she ever had to hide…

They crowded into a carriage on tracks set into the inner wall of the outer hull. She observed thick layering of foamlike material, evidently insulation. Heat loss could be a formidable problem in deep space, as would heat gain, if the ship moved into close orbit about a star.

Suddenly the vehicle was moving, accelerating to frightening velocity. The stanchions supporting the inner decks moved past at such a rapid rate they began to take on the appearance of the strings of a giant Mintakan harp plant, or the trunks of forest vines in Yael’s memory of her home planet. How glad she was to be riding instead of running! Slammer followed behind, having no problem with the velocity.

Then the carriage climbed. At first this increased her weight, making her sagging flesh chafe against a suit built for a male torso, but soon it lightened as they came into the region of decreased gravity. Melody realized that they had passed the officers’ section and were heading into the sword-blade—the solar collector. The ship narrowed, forcing the ascent though they remained at the hull. If the job were near the axis, gravity would be mild. Thank the God of Hosts!

They coasted to a stop and jumped out. Now they ran down a short passage to a vast airlock. Melody felt dizzy and uncoordinated. Not the effect of the intoxicant, she decided, but the half-gravity of this region. This business of gravity constantly changing with elevation was intellectually comprehensible, but took some getting used to in practice. The men, however, seemed to be used to it.

Slammer joined them. Now at last Gary noticed her. “Yael!” he cried. “You can’t come out here!”

Melody shrugged. “Why not?”

“Hurry it up,” another suited figure snapped. “We’re slow already. Crew B will pick up merits.”

There must be competitive interactions between crews, encouraging better performance. Good system, Melody thought.

Gary hesitated only momentarily. “All right, Yael, stay tight on my tail. I don’t have time now to take you back to your level. If anything happened to you…”

The lock closed. Pressure diminished, making her suit become rigid, although it was still flexible at the joints. Then the outer lock opened, swinging outward, and the huge dome that was one indentation of the tripartite sword-blade lay before them.

Dome? It should be a valley, thought Melody. But then she realized: Centrifugal gravity drew toward the outside, not the center. The lock opened from a bubble in the sword-handle; the entire ship was over her head. It just didn’t seem that way from the inside.

The others went out, moving with peculiar dragging dancelike steps. Melody tried to follow—and found that the magnetic boots of the suit were holding her rooted to the deck.

“Go on out,” the man behind her said gruffly. “Haven’t you ever been on-hull before? We have to clear the lock.” He did a tap dance around her and was out.

Melody imitated his motions, and found that only the heel parts of her spaceboots were magnetic; the toe parts had no pull. Thus by pressing down on one toe she was able to draw the heel free without threatening her overall balance. Or so she thought. But suddenly it let go, causing her to lurch frighteningly. Fortunately her other foot held firm. She was grateful the pull was so strong; no danger of falling off accidentally.

Clumsily, she heeled-and-toed after the last man. She was able to diminish the lurches by levering each heel up just so, not too much or too little. The man walked right around the curved lock until he was hanging from the top, then stepped out on the hull itself. Melody, still preoccupied with her walking, discovering how to lengthen her stride so as to make her heels pull up automatically behind, did not fully realize what was happening until she felt the blood impacting in her head. She was inverted!

Now she was hanging precariously from the huge hull. The half-gravity pull seemed like double-gravity; one slip and she would fall into the bottomless well of space! She was abruptly terrified.

But with an effort of will she reoriented. She was not hanging, she was standing, the great mass of the ship below her. Before her was now the valley of solar reflection. Yes, that was better!

“Here we are in a suit on the Ace of Swords,” Melody said to Yael. “A suit of space and of Tarot.” But the host was too frightened of the vacuum overhead to respond to the pun.

The surface of the blade was mirror-bright, a concave reflector that focused the sun’s rays on a suspended trough collector above it. From a distance the trough had been invisible, but now it loomed above like a guyed moon. At the moment it was dark, because this face of the sword was opposite the sun, but Melody knew that very soon that would change as the rotation of the ship brought this mirror sunside.

“It’s in the trough,” Gary’s voice said in her headphone. “Meteorite severed one guy. See it listing there?” He pointed, and indeed Melody could see it: the trough bent to the side. “We have to reconnect that wire before the next pass and tie it fast. We’ll have maybe five minutes. If that focused energy hits us…”

Melody understood. The light of the nearby star was powerful, and focused it would be hundreds of times as strong; that was the point of this setup. A man in that region would be fried, his suit exploding from the heat.

“Here she comes!”

The sword accelerated, seeming almost to yank Melody free of the deck. “What?” she exclaimed involuntarily.

“The blades are geared to orient squarely on the sun,” Gary explained tersely. “An even rate of turning would lose as much as fifty percent of the available energy due to imperfect angles of reception, missing the trough, and so on. So it clicks over the lean aspects more quickly. Uses up some energy, but gains much more. The whole blade’s on a separate axle, of course. We could stop it turning entirely if we had to, without messing up ship’s grav. But since the troughs are held in place by centrifugal force, that’s not advisable ordinarily.”

“I had no idea there was such sophistication in space,” Melody said, genuinely impressed. Indeed, it was evident that her prior education had been scant. She had thought that the philosophical reaches of Tarot encompassed most of what was important. Next time the Ace of Swords appeared in a reading, she would react to it with a vastly changed perspective!

“A thousand years of experience,” he said nonchalantly. “Look—sunrise.”

Mighty Etamin was rising rapidly over the valley horizon. The double star was too brilliant to look at directly, but she followed its progress by the moving shadows. It shoved its way almost directly overhead. Then the gearing slowed the rotation, causing Melody to fall abruptly to the side, and the star stood almost still.

Melody was intrigued. “It used to be a fable, about making the sun stand still,” she murmured.

Gary spoke to the others. “I’ll jet out with the replacement cord as soon as the sun sets. Put the safety on me, and haul me in in a hurry if I run late. I’m too young to fry.”

Efficiently they attached jet-pack and safety line to him. Then as the star commenced its movement offstage, Gary took off. Like a shooting star he streaked into the half-dusk, trailing two lines, the jets augmenting the initial boost of centrifugal force. As he passed through the slanting beam of the vanishing star, the light refracted from portions of his suit in a splay of rainbow colors, a splendid effect.

“Superman,” Yael remarked.

Gary angled the jet at apogee just as the star set. He maneuvered for what seemed like an unconscionably long time before coming to rest. Melody realized that space jetting was more tricky than it looked, especially with the drag of lines changing the vectors. Several minutes passed before he got the old wires removed and the new ones threaded. Then the sword rotated again.

“The sun will catch him!” Melody cried, alarmed. And she jumped with both feet.

Suddenly she was falling through space—with no safety line. It had been a natural reaction, but a mistaken one. She screamed.

There was a clamor in her suitphone as the startled men exclaimed. “The fool! Doesn’t she know not to—”

“Get another line and jet!” “No time; she’ll be out of range before we can—” “Look at that magnet!”

Melody looked as well as her slow spin in space enabled her to, though of course the remark had not been directed at her. Sure enough, Slammer had followed her into space, ever-loyal to its assignment. “But you have no metal to interact with out here!” she exclaimed to it. “You can’t maneuver!”

Slammer of course did not answer. He could not even nod. He had become an aimless meteor.

The sun had not reappeared. Melody remembered that the blade was tripartite; that last adjustment had merely taken it another third of the way around. Gary had been in no danger. No question about it: She had reacted foolishly, and now was in trouble.

“I’ll get her,” Gary said, sounding disgusted. Melody turned her head to face him—and her body turned the opposite way, confusing her. She was in freefall, unable to direct her progress. She found herself staring at the stars, some of which she knew were the other ships of the fleet. On the shuttle’s screen they had looked large and close together, but here in the open, five thousand miles apart, they were nothings. Long stars were Swords or Wands; the others were uncertain. Her chance in intersecting one was about one in five thousand—after allowing for the three weeks it would take at her present velocity to get her there. She would not be bored, however, as she could anticipate suffocating within one day.

Somewhat sooner than that, Gary arrived, having jetted across to intercept her. He caught her by one arm and they gyrated crazily in space; then he enfolded her space-suit in his arms and steadied them both with the jet. It was a tricky business, but he was expert. Almost immediately they stabilized.

“Save the magnet!” Melody cried.

“There’s no time; the sun’s coming back,” he said.

“No, we’re in the shade of the ship,” she said. “It may be turning, but we aren’t.” When he had been working on the trough, he had had in effect to race the rotation of the ship merely to keep up with it, but now they were flying straight out.

“But we have to get back to the lock. It will soon be in sun.”

Meanwhile, Slammer had passed them, going out. “I don’t care,” Melody cried. “We have to save the magnet!”

Gary sighed. “I’m a fool. I never could resist a plea from a pretty girl.” He timed their spin and actuated the jet. They accelerated after Slammer, gaining slowly.

Abruptly they stopped. “Oh-oh,” Gary said. “That’s as far as the safety line goes.”

“Then give me the jet and let me bring it back!” Melody exclaimed.

Gary shook his head within the helmet and said, “You are something else!” He was unaware how accurate that comment was. “You really want to catch that thing?”

“Slammer is a living, sapient, loyal entity. He tried to help me. I can’t let him die in space!”

“All right,” he said wearily. “I’ll put you on the line while I go after the magnet.” And he did so.

In due course he caught up with Slammer, put his arms around the sphere, and jetted back to Melody. Then she took the magnet while Gary grabbed her around the waist. They jetted as a mass back to the ship, following the spiraling safety line in.

They did have to land sunside, for the jet was now too low on fuel to permit them to stand off. They allowed the winding action of the ship as it turned under the line to reel them in. As they passed through the periphery of the sun-focus region, Melody felt the intense heat despite her suit. As they dropped lower, it abated, until at the deck the ambience was bright, not hot.

“Thank you, Gary,” she said as her feet took hold and Slammer assumed his own mobility. “I will remember you.”

Gary merely grimaced.

The Captain was approachable. At his invitation, Melody joined him for dinner in his quarters. The meal was not elaborate; they had the same tubed refreshments she had encountered before. But the atmosphere was different.

Captain Boyd did not mention her hullside episode, though he surely knew about it, and she was grateful for that. “It is good to relax with a pretty girl,” he remarked.

Melody was pretty at the moment; she and Yael had taken great pains to perfect her appearance. But she passed off the compliment as inconsequential. “For that, thank my host,” she said. “In my natural form I would hardly appeal to you.”

“Untrue,” he said, squeezing liquid into a cup that strongly resembled a miniature Spican ship. That design was intentional; the knives were like Sword ships, the plates were Polarian Disks, and a large set of Canopian Wands was used to serve the canned salad from an atom ship container. Naturally his interests in the fleet and Tarot would be reflected here! “Your mind and aura appeal to me regardless of your form. More than you perhaps appreciate. I, too, am a transfer.”

Melody looked at him, startled. “You?”

“Body is mere convenience. It is not in my records; very few entities know, and none aboard this ship. It is, in fact, a deep dark military secret. But I feel I can trust you.”

“No. Don’t trust me. I am not your kind.”

He moved his closed human mouth about in an expressive Solarian gesture. “How can we know? They needed a high-Kirlian captain in a hurry, and a high-Kirlian anti-hostage agent. A similar situation brings us together. Perhaps we derive from the same Sphere.”

“Unlikely. Auras such as ours are seldom discovered proximately.” That was one of the problems of aura; no one knew the rules by which it manifested. They were not genetic, certainly, but then what did account for the wide variation? Regardless, she was not about to reveal her origin, though it was possible he already knew it. Llume would not have told him, but he surely had other sources of information, and he was not stupid. Not stupid at all. She suspected he was smarter than she was, though he underplayed that aspect. Besides, how could she be certain that they were not being overheard, even here? With so many hostages around, no words were entirely safe.

“True,” he said equably. “I have no right to pry. Still, I feel a certain affinity.”

“It is the aura,” she said shortly. She still had not made up her mind whether to tell him about the six hostages, or even how to express it. The indecision irritated her.

“That too. I am in love with that aura; it is the most remarkable I ever expect to encounter.” He brought out a small box. “You have adapted very well to your confinement aboard this ship, and I hope soon to have the clearance for your return to Outworld. But I must admit to a certain pleasure in your presence. You are an uncommonly attractive woman.”

“He’s an uncommonly attractive man,” Yael murmured inside her, like an errant conscience. “I’d like to take him and… would it really be wrong to…?” The remainder of the thought was inchoate but powerful: the urge to be sexually taken.

Melody was unable to debate it as she had the same urge. But she kept her voice controlled. “Captain, what do you know of my mind?” she asked him.

“I have had reports of your expertise in Tarot,” he said. “It becomes apparent that you are no dabbler. I am inclined to verify the extent of your commitment.”

“Do you want me to tell your fortune?” she inquired with a smile.

“Yes. But not with your mechanical deck. Use this.” And he opened the box and lifted out a cube.

“Watch it!” Yael warned. “Might be a hypnocube.”

“I doubt I could be hypnotized by visual means,” Melody reassured her. “My mind is sonically oriented. But thanks for the warning.” Aloud, she said: “This is Tarot?”

“This is Tarot,” Dash agreed, smiling. “Each face of it is a presentation, so you can do a full layout in one motion. You shuffle it by shaking it, so.” He shook it lightly. “Then you set it down firmly, so.”

Melody stared. The sides of the cube had illuminated, each displaying a Tarot image. It was the Cluster deck, manifesting electronically.

The top of the cube showed the key called The Lovers. Dash reached out slowly and tapped the cube without moving it. The King of Aura replaced the prior card. He tapped it again, and now it was the Queen of Aura. He tapped a third time, and the three faces became superimposed, the King and Queen moving into the embrace of The Lovers.

Melody did not know whether to be more amazed at the capabilities of the cubic deck, the facility with which he managed it, or the message it contained. That last was an unspoken but quite specific proposition.

He leaned back, letting her decide. Melody picked up the cube, shook it, and contemplated the multiple faces that appeared, a different one on each side. It was possible to bring up all the faces of the deck in turn on any side, to superimpose them in combinations, or to form split-screen presentations for special types of readings. When cards were superimposed, the pictures merged to form a new scene. There was never confusion or obfuscation. This was in fact a miniature, self-contained computer—and a dream deck.

“Do you like it?” Dash inquired with a straight face.

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she said sincerely. The fact that most of her life had been spent without vision as she knew it now was hardly relevant. The perfect Tarot!

“It is yours,” he said.

She did not answer. There was no answer she could make, no thanks she could proffer. No possible gift could have meant more to her, and there was no way she could refuse it. Her mental image of the Star-card returned, but this time it was fleeting, faded. Her greatest hope of the past had been weathered down, had lost its luster, become a matter of lesser concern. Now a brighter star was rising to preempt it.

She shook the cube once more, randomly (she thought), and set it down. One face lighted: the Two of Cups, in the ancient Thoth format. The picture showed a flower about whose stem two Solarian fish twined. From the flower poured twin currents of water that deflected off the heads of the fish to plunge into two great chalices, finally overflowing into a lake. And the written hieroglyphs spelled out the single word: LOVE.

It was her inner emotion, betrayed by the Tarot. She had been taken by surprise and overwhelmed.

Dash put out his hand. Unable to demur, she took it. Their auras interacted powerfully, more strongly than before, compellingly. She found it significant that he had not invoked this power before; he had let her wrestle with the cube and lose on her own. Slowly he lifted her to her feet and drew her body into his embrace.

Slammer shivered momentarily, then drew back to the far side of the room, having decided that no attack was being made on her.

“Wow!” Yael said. It was her maximum response to the situation, embodying virtually complete desire and abandon. Melody herself had no better comment.

Dash led her to the couch, sat her down, and gently removed her dress. Her full human mammaries were exposed to his male gaze and touch, but now she had no fear. Then her primary sexual characteristics were similarly exposed. His amazingly evocative hands slid over the contours of her body, amplified by his aura. Then he brought his lips down to kiss the human nipples.

The sensation became so strong that Melody gave in to a low sigh. Never before had she felt such exquisite physical and emotional stimulation. She reached up to enfold his head and press it to her bosom. Her heart was beating rapidly, and a pleasant warmth expanded in her chest. She wanted to give herself to him utterly, to be consumed by him, to merge, starting with those breasts. She wanted—impregnation.

“God of Hosts!” Yael whispered. “I never knew it would be like this! I’m bursting!”

Dash paused momentarily to doff his own clothes. His host-body was a handsome figure of a man, lean and muscular and well proportioned. At its center, just at the bifurcation of the legs, projected a small limb: the copulatory organ of this species.

And she wanted that organ inside her body. It was pure Solarian-animal lust, whose true meaning she had never before properly understood in the Tarot. “Thoth Eleven,” she whispered, visualizing the variant of the card that best symbolized her need. Girl astride lion, wide open: LUST.

Yet it could not be. For she was not a young Solarian female, but an old Mintakan neuter. She could not allow herself to bud—or in the present circumstance, to be impregnated. True, Yael had taken her contraceptive shot, but the meaning remained. For her, this was reproduction; the acts of love and lust and mergeance and creation could not be separated emotionally. If she did this thing, it would be real. Real in the only manner that mattered to her fundamental self-view.

She had to desist. Yet she simply lacked the will to deny the Captain’s imperative, or her own. She was in this incarnation a young woman, and he was a handsome man. He had given her a gift of incalculable value, and touched her with his aura, and made her live. He had fairly won her.

The man came down on her, his phenomenal aura penetrating hers again, his flesh following.

Melody summoned her only remaining defense: her knowledge of what she was. “Take over, Yael!” she cried, and blanked out.

7. Taming the Magnet

:: why has there been no scheduled council? ::

*dash suffers pangs of doubt*

:: that birdbrain! we require more forceful leadership summon council ::

*but*

:: do you wish to answer to the force of sphere quad-point? ::

*council shall be summoned*

Suddenly it opened into realization, that elusive objection she had to Slammer the magnet. He was an excellent bodyguard—but also a most effective jailer.

Slammer was the Captain’s creature, not Melody’s. The Captain was a fine man, and Yael was, as she put it, head over heels about him. (Heels over head better described the position actually assumed.) Only extreme discipline and awareness of her own nature prevented Melody from being the same. Sexual attraction was potent stuff, and she wasn’t used to it. Perhaps it was already too late. And what would she do when she finally had to leave the ship? She knew Dash could not go with her. Love between the species was an exercise in futility.

Regardless, the magnet was not hers. Should things sour with Dash—and Melody’s old neuter mind had to consider that possibility—she was in trouble. Love could turn suddenly to hate. Lovers had quarrels at times—this was in fact an aspect of their relationship—and sudden flares of anger. If Dash had such a flare, and Slammer took it literally—

She, Melody of Mintaka, could be abruptly defunct, along with her human host.

“Yael,” she said silently.

“You’re worried about something,” Yael said wisely. “It’s heating up my nerves.”

“I think we should tame the magnet,” Melody said. “Make friends with him, convert him loyalty to us.”

“But it must be loyal! You saved his from drifting into deep space!”

“He tried to save me, too, remember. In Polarian terms, we exchanged debt. But we have no evidence that magnets operate the same way. Do you have any idea how to proceed?”

“I tamed a dinosaur once,” Yael said. “At least, I tried to. You can’t ever really tame anything that big.”

“Slammer is every bit as dangerous as a dinosaur,” Melody told her. “Maybe similar methods would work. What exactly did you do?” As usual, it was easier to ask for the information than to delve for it herself.

“I put out food for it. It was a needle-eater, of course; I wouldn’t go near one of the meat-eaters.” Now there was a welling of emotion, as she was reminded of what the carnivorous dinosaur had cost her.

“It ate needles? Those ancient metal sewing slivers?”

Yael’s humor returned. “Vine needles, silly! Tough, green things. But that’s what they eat. Only this one was lame, and couldn’t get enough because it couldn’t jump. So I shinnied up a vine and cut down a lot of high tendrils. He’d come every day for more, but he never would let me get close to him.”

“Feeding,” Melody said. “But our magnet is already well fed.” She considered. “We don’t want to take over feeding; it would make people suspicious. What else would Slammer be interested in?”

“Girls,” Yael said simply.

“Oh—are magnets sexed, too? I assumed the ‘he’ was merely the convention.”

“They must be. How do they make little magnets?”

“Oh, there are lots of possibilities. Fission—” But she realized this concept would be difficult to explain, and might not be relevant. “How do they?”

“Maybe we should ask Slammer,” Yael said.

“Slammer might not wish to discuss so private a subject,” Melody said. “And how would he answer?”

Yael had no suggestion. Magnets were silent, except when they banged into something. They could hear and understand, but not talk.

“They’re physical creatures,” Melody said at last. “They must have needs. If not sexual, something else. Entertainment, perhaps. How do they relax?”

“They just hover.” Yael pointed out.

“On-duty, they hover. But off-duty?” Aloud, she said: “Slammer, you never seem to rest. I am concerned for your welfare. Would you like some time off?”

The magnet bobbed agreeably. That meant he understood, but was otherwise noncommittal.

“I’m sure I’m safe, here in my cabin. Why don’t you take a float around the ship for an hour?”

But the magnet waggled sidewise: no. He remained the perfect guardian—or guard.

“Suppose I walk with you, Slammer? Anywhere you want to go.”

The magnet was amenable. Perhaps he thought she was obliquely commanding it to take her somewhere, such as back to the crew quarters for another romp in space. Well, she would keep refining the directive.

They moved out into the hall. “Where to?” Melody asked, stopping. “This is your walk, remember.”

It took a while for the magnet to really understand or accept, but finally he set off slowly down the hall. Melody followed, and when Slammer saw that the correct proximity was being maintained, he speeded up. Soon she was running, and that brought her a new human phenomenon: breathlessness.

Abruptly the magnet halted. Melody drew up beside him. They were in a passage that turned at right angles a short distance ahead. It was a handsome section decorated with fiber paneling that showed the grain of its organic state. Unusual, in this ship; elsewhere there was little nonfunctional display. “Where now, friend?”

Slammer jerked back and forth, then hovered expectantly.

“You want to go that way? Very well; we’ll go.” And Melody walked on into the paneled section.

But the magnet did not follow, though she passed the body-length limit. Melody paused. “Not this way, Slammer? Sorry, I misunderstood.” She went back, passing the magnet, and started down the hall they had traversed.

The magnet still hovered in place. “Not this way either? Slammer, I don’t understand, and I really do want to. Is there a—a secret door here? Another route?”

The sidewise shake: no.

Melody brightened. “You want to rest right here, where it is so pretty and peaceful!”

But again it was no. Slammer jerked forward, pointing out the way he wanted to go—but didn’t go.

“Yael, do you understand this?” Melody asked.

“It’s a mystery to me,” Yael answered. “Maybe he doesn’t like wood.”

Startled, Melody stared at the hall with new understanding. “Wood! Not metal. This must be a solid wood section, not mere paneling.”

“Yes, it’s pretty,” Yael agreed.

“Don’t you see: the magnet can’t go in here!” Melody said. “Wood is nonmagnetic. The force of magnetism is very strong, but it fades rapidly with distance. The wood must extend so deeply that Slammer has no purchase.”

“Hey, like skidding on ice!” Yael exclaimed.

Melody fathomed her analogy: ice was cold, solidified water that had a greatly reduced surface friction. Entities that propelled themselves by means of frictive application against available surfaces—such as the Solarians aboard a spaceship—could suffer loss of efficiency on frozen water. In fact, they might become almost helpless, or even be injured by a fall. Skidding on ice—the inexplicable become explicable. “Yes, the magnet is unable to propel himself through this region,” Melody agreed. “Yet he wishes to go there.”

“Why doesn’t he just roll?”

“There is a bend in the hall. He would be stalled, powerless, there, until some frictive entity carried him out.”

“Well, we could carry him.” Yael pointed out. “So we could! Child, at times you are brilliant!”

“I’m not a child. Not after what I did with Captain Boyd.” Yael spoke with a certain rueful pride.

“I had no facetious intent about either your age or your intelligence. Sometimes the simplistic way is best.” Melody was unable to comment on the culmination with the Captain; she had blanked out. But from Yael’s memory she gathered it had been quite a performance; the man was an excellent lover.

She approached the magnet. “Slammer, I’ll carry you, if you’re not too heavy. May I put my arms around you?” Slammer nodded. At last they understood each other! Melody reached around him and drew him into her body. The magnet’s surface was warm and was vibrating. She had of course held Slammer before, but that had been out in space, and she had never actually touched his surface. Probably that space episode was the main reason he trusted her now. Magnets did not give their trust casually, she knew.

Slammer’s powerful magnetic field phased through her aura, making her slightly dizzy. She had been right: The intensity of its field varied exponentially with distance, so that even a few feet brought it too low to be useful for propulsion. A magnet an inch away from metal could not be resisted; six feet away it was helpless. “Now let go slowly, so I’ll know if I can handle your weight.”

The magnet grew heavy. But when he was about half her host-body’s weight, it leveled off. The host-body was young and strong; this burden could be handled.

“We’re on our way,” Melody said aloud, feeling the tingle of incipient adventure. It seemed she was acquiring the taste for this sort of thing! “I hope it isn’t far.”

She marched forward into the wooden hall. At the turn she swung about—and was baffled. For the passage immediately reversed to pick up on the other side. It had no likely purpose—except to inhibit the progress of magnets. “But you know, Slammer,” she gasped—for she was tiring already—“you could get through here if you had to. All you have to do is get up speed in the metal section, and cannonball right through this obstruction. You’d have enough impetus left over to roll the rest of the way, I should think.”

The magnet’s field flexed momentarily. He understood. Like Yael back on her farm, he had been balked by appearance as much as by fact. And he had lacked the ingenuity to devise an alternative.

But Melody wondered how intelligent the magnet was. Slammer understood every word she said, and since it was a nonlinguistic creature, that suggested a very adaptable intellect. Limited by silence and by dependency on metal, the magnets seemed like animals; but granted the resources of the sapient creatures of the galaxy, why wouldn’t they be comparable?

Yes, they could be smart enough. If a magnet slammed through the wooden barrier, his act would soon be known. So it would not do any such breaking without excellent reason. And how could anyone be sure the magnets were not linguistic? They could have their own magnetic language that no human had bothered to learn. Also, it would be the least intelligent magnets who would be lured into spaceship duty; the smart ones would stay clear. Unless they chose to come, and play dumb, until they knew enough to build and operate their own spaceships.

All speculation, probably without foundation. But she would keep working on it. She had to understand the magnets if she wanted to win them over.

They came to a second detour in the wooden hall. This one incorporated dips and rises in the floor, so that a magnet trying to roll through would be trapped. Melody’s arms were hurting now, and she staggered along; she would have to exercise more to build up the human tissues. “Next time, I’ll roll you!” she gasped. The magnet could not roll himself up a slope, but she could push him.

Then the metal hall resumed, to her relief. As they came into it, Slammer’s weight abated. Finally she loosened her grip, and he floated free. “We made it!” Yael exclaimed, as if it had been a great adventure. “But, oh, my arms!”

Now Slammer led the way with impetuous haste. He moved up a ramp, then up another. The passage branched, but the magnet seemed to know exactly where he was going. Melody had to run to keep up.

Abruptly Slammer stopped. Melody drew up, her chest heaving in a fashion she knew would have been an impregnation hazard in the presence of a male Solarian, and looked about.

They were in a storage chamber. Cartons of supplies marked in code were stacked in tall columns. They appeared to contain military hardware. This was deep within the ship, several levels above their starting point. The gravity had diminished slightly as they moved nearer the center. This made it good for storage, as the boxes could be stacked higher with less danger of breakage, were easier to move, and could be delivered to other parts of the ship readily by chute. So this was a well-protected spot, suitable for bombs, laser guns, and such. And isolated from magnets.

Now Slammer hovered nervously. When placid, he was unmoving; here he was doing little spins about a tight axis. What was bothering him? Surely he couldn’t be afraid!

Then another magnet appeared. “Oh-oh,” Yael said, suddenly worried. “If magnets can’t get in here, how come—?”

Melody wondered the same. “Slammer, are we in danger?”

But Slammer had already shot out to meet the strange magnet. The two banged together resoundingly, flew apart, and clanged together again. The sonics were deafening.

Melody covered her ears. Not since leaving Sphere Mintaka had she experienced clangor of this magnitude! But it hurt the less-sophisticated human auditory apparatus.

“They’re fighting!” Yael cried. “We’d better get out of here!”

At first Melody was inclined to agree. But several things nagged at her. If Slammer were protecting its human companion, it would not be politic to desert him. And if no magnet could cross the wooden barrier, what was the other magnet doing here? Slammer had evidently known where he was going, and expected to be met like this. But why would he go to all this trouble for a fight? What was so precious that he had to search it out and fight for it? “That other magnet did not attack us,” Melody pointed out. “It’s smaller, and not brightly painted. Not a warrior-type, I think. This is a magnet-magnet affair; we’re probably safe.” She was hardly sure of that, but she also doubted her human body could get away fast enough to escape an aggressive magnet. “And I want to see exactly what they’re fighting about. It might be important.”

“And you say you don’t like adventure!” Yael said admiringly. “You’ve got nerves of steel!”

“All Mintakans do. Oh—you meant that figuratively! No, I’m extremely uncomfortable. But I honestly don’t think we’re in immediate danger. Slammer can protect us, and it would not have gone to this trouble to lead us into danger.”

So she poked around while the noise of the clashing magnets became even more intense. The ship must be sound-conditioned, otherwise the commotion would already have attracted attention, even from sleeping off-shift officers. The two globes were striking each other faster now, and with unerring accuracy, though they moved so swiftly they were only blurs. What a battle!

Suddenly Melody froze. She had peeked into an alcove in which some electronic equipment had been set up.

It was the retransfer unit, supposedly destroyed in the shuttle sabotage blast. She had been instructed in its use, back on Planet Outworld, because of the importance of her mission. There was no question about its identity; there was only one such unit in the fleet.

Captain Boyd had to have known the unit was safe. Why had he deceived her? Had he also salvaged the mattermitter?

Abruptly the noise stopped. Melody looked around nervously. Had one of the magnets destroyed the other?

Slammer shot into view. His, colors were dulled, but he seemed to be in reasonable health. “So you outbanged your opponent,” Melody said. “Congratulations. What next?”

The magnet dodged toward the hall through which they had come.

“Time to go home, it seems,” Melody remarked. “Didn’t seem like much of a relaxation for you, though.”

They returned through the passages, Melody verifying her memory of the route. Now she had a special reason to know the way! The other magnet must have been assigned to guard the retransfer unit—it was certainly valuable enough to warrant that!—and somehow Slammer had known. And had shown her.

Why? Why should the magnet care? It didn’t quite make sense. A Solarian or Mintakan might have done it because of her interest, in appreciation for what she had done in the hullside fiasco, but the magnets had evinced no signs of such sentiments.

Could Slammer have acted on the Captain’s orders? But Dash could have told her directly. Why go through the charade of deceiving her?

Melody shook her head as they arrived back at her cabin. It was tempting to draw easy conclusions, but she was too old and experienced to do that. She lacked sufficient information.

But it certainly made for marvelous speculations!

Melody reassembled the manual Cluster Tarot deck thoughtfully. She did not use the elegant cubic deck Dash had given her; that was too precious to share with strangers, and there was always the risk of breaking the delicate mechanism. Suppose some dolt dropped it on the deck while shake-shuffling?

But the manual deck sufficed. She had just identified yet another hostage. That brought the total to nine—of nine tested.

Was the entire upper-officer cadre of this ship hostage, except for the high-Kirlian Captain himself? What a nest of subversion she had shuttled into! And back on Imperial Outworld they didn’t know.

So many hostages! Could one of them have salvaged the retransfer unit, planted the sabotage bomb, and then made a false report to the Captain? That seemed likely. But that meant the retransfer unit was under the control of the hostages—hardly a reassuring situation!

Could the hostages know about her? No, for if they had been aware of the threat she posed to them, they would have acted against her before this.

Slammer moved closer to her, now that she was alone. It was his way of asking for attention. That provided her with one reason she had not been bothered: she had a very able bodyguard!

Melody was becoming more adept at playing the game of twenty questions, as Yael described it. In moments she had identified the magnet’s concern.

He needed to take another walk.

They used a different route, but ran into the same type of wooden barrier. She rolled Slammer through it with dispatch. She was getting a fair picture of the geography of the inner labyrinth of the ship, though that seemed to be regarded as a military secret.

As before, this was the off-shift for the majority of the officers, so there were few circulating. Also, she now realized, Slammer selected the route to avoid people. His mission, such as it was, was his own secret.

The other magnet was hovering at the far side of the wooden passage. “Ouch!” Melody said, rendering the human equivalent of a chord of alarm. “Must we go through this again?” But she decided not to interfere. If Slammer and the other magnet got their kicks by bashing each other…

But this time there was no banging. Instead, Slammer moved aside, and the smaller magnet came close. Melody concealed her alarm. “What can I do for you, Slimmer?” she inquired brightly of the stranger.

A much smaller object circled the strange magnet, like a satellite around its primary. It hovered right before Melody.

Suddenly, like a splendid symphony of meaning, it burst upon her: a baby magnet! Slammer had had a tryst with his lady-friend, Slimmer, and now they had offspring. “Hello, Beanball,” she said.

The mother-magnet withdrew. Slammer indicated the barrier.

“So you just wanted to see your bud,” Melody murmured. “Well, I’m glad I was able to help, even if it was contrary to regulations. Here I thought you two were fighting!”

Yael laughed. “Slimmer got banged up!”

Again, Melody had to delve for the interpretation. A Solarian bang or bash was an old-style party at which too-free leeway was fostered by consumption of mind-affecting substances. The kind of thing she might have been involved in, had the hullside emergency not interrupted it. Thus a female could get impregnated: banged up. With magnets, the banging was literal; it was their mode of copulation.

“Or maybe balled,” Yael added.

Balled: reference to the Solarian male’s reproductive apparatus. “Where do you pick up all this information?” Melody inquired teasingly.

“What information?”

The girl did not even know the derivation of her terms! Melody had been drawing on her own knowledge and Tarot insights to understand the Solarian situation. “Never mind. We’d better go home.” Aloud she said: “Come on, Slammer. We’ll visit again when you want to. Goodbye, Beanball.”

But the little magnet hovered close. When Melody put her arms around Slammer to start him down the hall, Beanball remained in orbit about them.

“Now, wait,” Melody protested. “Once we cross the barrier, you can’t return to your mother, Beanball. You’d better stay here.”

The ball did not go. “Slammer, can you explain—?”

Then she realized: The little magnet was too new to travel on his own power. He was controlled by the fields of his parents. He had gone to the father when the mother had departed, probably to resume her guard duty before some officer checked on it. The presence of the baby would be certain evidence of dereliction of duty. Slammer was better able to conceal and protect his offspring. So he had come, summoned by some magnetic communication, to assume his familial responsibility.

Melody sighed. “Very well. I enabled this to occur; I must carry through.” Feeling a bit jealous, as she had never gotten to raise a bud of her own, she picked up Slammer and walked down the wooden hall.

Beanball hovered before them, held firmly by the large magnet’s field. Slammer could not move himself here, but he could still act strongly on any metal in the immediate vicinity.

At the barrier she set Slammer down and let him roll to the foot of the hollow. Beanball remained poised in air, not affected by the rotation of the larger form. Very precise magnetic control! At the far end of the barrier they resumed normal motion. Soon, unobserved, they were back at the cabin.

But Melody discovered her responsibilities had only begun. Beanball needed to be fed, and could neither forage for itself nor report to the refueling station for a handout. It was plain that the human officers did not know of the little magnet’s existence—and should not be informed. Melody had seen no other little magnets; obviously the wood barriers were intended to segregate the sexes and prevent inconvenient trysts. Magnets were indisputably loyal to their masters, but their primary loyalty had to be to their own kind, especially their children. That was the nature of any sapient or near-sapient species. Culture could be fostered only by close parent-offspring ties. The magnets obviously had a culture of their own, and interpersonal ties—which the officers of this cluster fleet chose to ignore or suppress.

Melody did not believe in slavery. The situation of the magnets made her increasingly uncomfortable. She could not blame this on the hostages, for they were obviously carrying on a tradition that was well established in the fleet. Captain Boyd himself had his magnet, and the Captain did not object to the system.

Well, she objected! At such time as she acquired the power of decision, she would free the magnets and give them self-determination. But at the moment she hardly had control of her own life.

So she kept the secret, and helped provide for the baby. She visited the magnet dispensary and acted like a foolish girl, asking for a big chunk of coal as a souvenir. It was against policy, but a little heaving of her healthy bosom caused the man in charge to overlook policy. She took the chunk to her cabin, and watched Slammer pound a fragment of it to dust. Beanball floated through this dust, guided by his father’s field, and sucked it in through almost invisibly small vents.

Then Melody picked Beanball up and set him in the nestbox she and Yael had fashioned. Yael, of course, was thrilled with the whole thing, and proved to be quite helpful with the mundane details. She cleaned up the films of ash that formed in the nest, the magnet’s waste product, and labored to locate usable metals for Beanball to ingest and grow on.

Melody appreciated these services. She tended to get bored with the routines of daily existence, and she had more philosophical matters on which to dwell—such as how much of the segment fleet was infiltrated by hostages?

Still, it was a novel development. She had set out to gain the loyalty of a magnet—and had become foster-mother to a little magnet. Some bearing that had on the situation!

8. Skot of Kade

COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATING * / :: ^o_o

:: where is dash? ::

*indisposed*

:: require election of new leadership the bird has been stalling ::

*there have been cautions a resistance movement has been discovered in segment etamin this could have caused much trouble dash feels that premature action can negate the effort, as it did in the prior case*

:: the prior case was under dash coordination! a thousand years were lost by that bungling! put the issue: new leadership now ::

*concurrence?*

SILENCE

:: (fools!) ::

Llume the Undulant succeeded in bringing in another client. They were getting harder to fetch now, as the cooperative ones had been accounted for first.

This was a young, handsome officer, a mere 0-3 lieutenant, lowest in the command section of the ship. His aura was in the range of forty to fifty.

“I am Skot of Kade,” he said formally. “Major Llume of Spica requested me to attend.”

Melody smiled and leaned forward enticingly. She had her most effective outfit on: a front curvature that fairly popped out the eyeballs of the average male Solarian, and a posterior tautness that made him pop further down. She’d have to be careful not to overdo these effects with so young a man, lest it distort the reading. The cards were adept at reflecting emanations of lust.

Sure enough, Skot gawked and reddened slightly. “Do you understand the nature of the Tarot?” Melody inquired, shrugging so that less cleavage showed.

“Some. I understand you’ve been doing readings on all the men. They’ve talked about it, some.”

“I’ll bet!” Yael muttered. “They talked about who could see farthest between two breasts.” But she seemed pleased. Female objection to male perception was never very deep.

“I hope they were satisfied with what they perceived,” Melody said aloud.

“Oh, yes!” Then he flushed a bit more. “That is—they found it very interesting. The Tarot, I mean. Views, revelations… uh…”

“Of course. The Tarot is fascinating.” Melody could not resist flexing the muscles of one shoulder to make the mammary on that side twitch. She was playing a game— but the irony was that behind the cynical manipulation of the flesh, she rather liked this innocent-seeming young man. There were differences of personality among hostages. In fact, they were just about like other transferees, except for their alien-galaxy culture and their need to hide this. Were the two galaxies not at war, she would have been able to get along very well with them.

She reviewed the cards, then gave them to him to shuffle. Finally she laid them out, providing a facile spot analysis for each card that had nothing to do with her real observations. She was having trouble with Skot’s responses; they were subtly wrong at key spots. Was she losing her touch?

As the reading concluded, she realized: She had been anticipating the response pattern of an Andromedan transfer from Spheres *, —, /, ::, or ^o_o. Skot had not matched any of these. If some of the hostages were from unknown lesser Spheres, she would have extraordinary difficulty identifying them. But she finally concluded that this man was not a hostage. In fact, he was not even a transfer. He was exactly what he seemed to be: a young, friendly, naive Solarian male of high-Kirlian aura.

He was perhaps the only nonhostage among the officers of the Ace of Swords. Apart from Llume and the Captain, of course.

“Skot—may I call you Skot?—will you come to my cabin for a moment?” Melody said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Miss Dragon, I really can’t—”

“Yael.”

“Miss Yael—it isn’t—I mean—”

“Please. There is something important I want to show you.”

He swallowed. “Oh. Uh, I’ll wait here. You can bring it out.”

“Unlikely.” She took him by the arm and guided him from the lounge.

He balked at her cabin door. “Miss Yael, you don’t understand. I have a girl planetside—”

“Slammer, please escort this man inside my cabin.”

The magnet hesitated. This was a confusing directive, as Skot obviously was not attacking her and so did not need to be moved. And the secret of the baby magnet was inside.

The man became even more nervous. “All right, miss. I’ll talk to you inside. But it won’t—”

As the door closed behind them, Melody’s manner changed. “We cannot be overheard here, Skot. Slammer has made certain. Here’s why.” And she uncovered the nest and lifted out Beanball.

Skot gaped. “A baby magnet!”

“Now you know I stand in violation of ship’s regulations,” Melody said. “I need some help in providing for this—”

“I cannot help you! The rules of the ship…”

“Will you turn me in?”

He gulped again. “Miss, I’m sorry, but I have to. You know that.”

Melody let a strap slip artfully down one shoulder, baring a fair expanse of convex flesh. “I’d be exceedingly grateful if you would not.”

His jaw firmed. “I’m sorry. Had you really intended to keep this secret, you should not have shown me.”

He was quite right of course. But Slammer, recognizing the implied threat, moved, jamming the officer against the wall. “Slammer—easy!” Melody cried.

Meanwhile, Yael had caught on to some of what was transpiring. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You can’t threaten him; he’s an officer!”

Melody ignored the inner voice, though she found herself sickened at her own actions. She was not cut out for this!

She controlled her voice. “Slammer will crush you if I suggest you mean me harm. He’s not so stupid as not to know the harm your report could do. And if he got the notion you meant his baby harm…”

Sweat beaded Skot’s forehead, but he did not relent. “I am loyal to my ship. I must be honest. I must report. If you—if you do this, there will be an investigation, and the magnet will be discovered anyway.”

Maybe somewhere there were females who were natural conspirators, who actually liked this sort of thing. Melody knew she was not, and never would be that kind. She was doing this badly, hating it, disgusted with herself— still she had to proceed. “True. Unless I hid the magnet and told them you had tried to rape me. I have reason to think that Captain Boyd would believe me.”

Skot closed his eyes, knowing enough of the ship’s skuttlebutt to comprehend the probable rage of the Captain. But his voice did not waver. “I must report. I will not be drawn into a conspiracy.”

The man was inflexible! The fear of death was on him but he would not yield a fraction of his honor. Feeling guilty, Melody switched back to sexual temptation. “It is such a small thing I ask,” she said persuasively. “A few lumps of coal, some bits of metal, a place under your bunk for the baby to hide. No one would know.” Now she shrugged the other strap down. The material peeled away from her front, suddenly exposing both mammaries in all their rondure.

Skot turned on her a look of disgust tinged with pity. “No,” he whispered.

She dropped the burden. “Slammer, let him go,” Melody said. “He is a friend.”

The magnet withdrew so suddenly that the man stumbled forward. He caught his balance. “You don’t understand. I said—”

“I understand you are an honest man,” Melody said, drawing up her dress to cover her mammaries. She was not disappointed, in this case, that their appeal had failed. “You will do what you believe is right, even though you die for it. You are loyal to your galaxy.”

He nodded, not trusting her. “You will let me go?”

“Suppose I were to show you that your loyalty is misplaced?”

His eyes narrowed. “You—you’re an agent of Andromeda? You brought me here to try to convert me to—?”

Now she could smile. “I’m an agent of Milky Way. Were you aware of my aura?”

“It is very strong, the strongest I’ve encountered. But—”

“It is the most intense aura in Segment Etamin,” Melody told him without pride. “Perhaps in the galaxy. Which is why I was drafted. I came here to overwhelm a hostage. Do you know what a hostage is?”

“No. A kind of transferee, I suppose.”

“An involuntary host. One who is controlled by an alien aura against his will, not under the auspices of the Society of Hosts. A normal person who is possessed by an Andromedan.”

“I thought that was impossible!”

“So did we all. But Andromeda has had a breakthrough. The hostage is aboard this ship. It can only be overwhelmed by an aura as strong as my own, coordinated with special retransfer apparatus.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you breeding magnets, then? Why go out of your way to show it to me, then threaten me? This has nothing to do with your stated mission.”

“Because I had to be sure of you without giving away my real motive. In case you turned out to be… corruptible.”

Skot worked this out. “If I had agreed to conceal the baby magnet, then—”

“I would have let you do it. And provided any other implied rewards. But not the hostage information.”

He waved one hand in negation. “If I had agreed, then you would not have been exposed. But if I insisted on the truth, after proving myself, you could tell me all of it. So either way, you would still be safe—if you actually can justify breaking the rules.”

“Brace yourself,” Melody said. “I’m sorry the test had to be so brutal, but I must admit I am not Solarian, so am not really interested in—” She flickered her eyes down toward her bosom. But she felt uncomfortable, because in this healthy young body she was interested in human love, as her experience with Dash had shown. Solarian romance was more a function of glands than of intellect. “I had to know you were galactic and loyal. Because—”

“Well, I still have to report—”

“Because I have been using the Tarot readings to detect other hostages. Nine of your fellow officers are Andromedans.”

He stared at her. “Impossible!”

“I know of only three who are loyal: you, Llume of Spica, and Captain Boyd. I still have three to test, but—”

“All the men you have tested—hostage? I just can’t believe that!”

“You can verify it with Llume. I haven’t told the Captain yet. I want to test the rest, and then give him a complete report.”

“You’re telling me even my bunkmate Hath is—”

“Hath of Conquest was the first I verified. Work it out for yourself: What normal Solarian male speaks in terms of the serpent-patina of reproduction? That’s typical of Sphere * of Andromeda!”

Skot considered. “You know, you’re right. He’s changed, recently. I thought he was just out of sorts, but he does act a bit like an alien. Hardly noticeable, but I’ve known him for a long time.”

“Are you willing on the basis of this, to withhold your report on the little magnet? At least until you are sure? I’m trying to win over the magnet loyalty to my side, which is the Milky Way side, in case there is a showdown.”

Skot shook his head in confusion. “You place me in a very difficult position. I don’t know where my loyalty lies. If what you have told me is true—but I’m not at all sure it is true.”

“Then just keep your mouth shut until you are sure— one way or another. On the one side is the mere abridgment of a nonsensical ship’s regulation; on the other is serious peril to our entire galaxy. While you are in doubt, you have to weigh the consequences of each direction of error.”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Melody smiled again. She knew she had acquired an inflexible ally who would be subverted by neither threat nor temptation. “It is an immense comfort to know there is another loyalist among the officers,” she said frankly.

Beanball progressed rapidly. That was probably a survival trait among his kind. Melody didn’t know what type of predators existed on the magnets’ home world, but obviously early speed and power helped. The little ball learned to hover unsteadily, and could move about the edges of the cabin near the floor. It was instructive to watch him, sometimes he went too far into the center and lost control. Then he spun crazily and dropped nearly to the floor before regaining equilibrium. He appeared to operate more by repulsion than by attraction; otherwise he would have hovered near the ceiling. Of course attraction would have snapped him right into floor or wall, while repulsion kept him conveniently afloat at his natural limit.

Slammer hovered in place, seeming to give off fatherly emanations of pleasure.

Finally she got the last three officers interviewed. All were hostages. It was time to report to the Captain.

But first she had a council of war with Llume and Skot in her cabin, the only place where privacy was assured. Slammer might not care what electronic eavesdroppers were elsewhere, but he was well aware of the need for secrecy here, and could locate any telltale devices.

“Of twelve upper-level officers below the rank of captain, ten are hostages,” Melody summarized the situation. “Tiala and nine males, all officers. There is no doubt in my mind; is there in yours?”

Llume buzzed her ball on the deck. “None. My observations concur: all are hostage.”

Skot shook his head grimly. “I have doubt, but not enough. I have to go along with your estimate.”

“Obviously they have concentrated on this ship,” Melody continued, “because it commands the segment fleet. There simply can’t be this number of hostages on other ships! They have chosen to remain concealed until receiving the signal to proceed overtly. That suggests that the hostaging is not complete. They would have struck already if they were sure of their power.” She paused, not liking this. “Probably they infiltrated this ship first, but need to work on other ships of the fleet. When they are ready, they will kill Captain Boyd and the three of us, then use ship and fleet to intimidate Outworld itself and disrupt segment resistance. The key is right here, because the armed might of Etamin is here. So we must act— now, before they do. The Captain’s authority, backed by the magnets, should enable us to make a clean sweep of this ship. After that, we’ll see about the fleet. But we have to convince the Captain without giving it away to the hostages prematurely.”

“I could conduct you to the Captain for an interview,” Skot said. “That would be according to protocol.”

“But I’d like you both present, as witnesses,” Melody said. “You are officers, while I am only a civilian visitor. I need your endorsement.”

“If we all go, the hostages might become aware,” Llume said. “They surely know who they are, and that we are not of them.”

“Yes. In fact, we’d better not remain here in conference long,” Melody said. “Suspicion means death.”

“I hesitate to suggest this,” Skot said, turning slightly red. “But maybe a complaint— You are a beautiful woman, and someone might—that is—”

“Someone might make an advance?” Melody inquired, smiling.

“Understand, it would not be—well, you could complain to the Captain, with Llume as witness—”

“Brilliant!” Then Melody paused. “But Slammer would—”

Skot frowned. “I had forgotten that. Sorry.”

“Unless the female attacked the male,” Llume suggested.

“Yes, that would do,” Melody agreed. “Skot turned me down before. I really was very pleased that he did so— no offense, Skot—but I understand rejected human women can become very angry. I might use the magnet to corner him, then—”

“And I would be witness on his behalf,” Llume said.

Skot looked doubtful. “I’m not sure—”

“Oh come on, Solarian!” Melody said. “One kiss won’t hurt you that much. And it would certainly be a case for the Captain’s attention, since I’m not of the ship’s complement.”

“But you and the Captain…”

Just how much news had spread about the ship? Had that single episode forever defined her as the Captain’s mistress? “Yes, he would certainly want to know! Maybe we had better rehearse it,” Melody said mischievously. “You are just entering the lounge, here, and I jump out at you and—” She made a fine leap and planted a firm kiss on his open mouth. He had to put his arms around her, lest she fall. “And you try to push me away, but I cling—”

“Unlimb that man!” Llume cried against the wall. “You belong to the Captain!”

Just so. “Uh, let’s make a minor alteration in the dialogue,” Melody suggested, embarrassed.

“The Captain shall settle your hash!” Llume said.

Melody paused. “That still does not quite—”

“This is a matter for the Captain’s attention!”

“Beautiful!” Melody exclaimed, satisfied at last.

“Now, would you disengage,” Skot pleaded. “Before I”—his arms tightened about her—“before I forget…”

Melody disengaged quickly. There were unkind aspects to this game.

They lined up before Captain Boyd, in his office: two in Solarian form, one in Polarian, and the magnet. “Request privacy in this matter,” Llume said formally against the floor. “Concerns protocol.”

Dash eyed Skot. The Lieutenant’s uniform was in disarray, the Imperial Outworld blazon smudged, his hair mussed. “So I see.” He waved a finger through the control field on his desk, and the door clamped shut. There were different kinds of doors on the ship; this was one of the swinging variety. “We are securely private, now.”

Melody stepped forward. “This is no complaint, Captain. It was a ruse to gain private audience without suspicion. We have a crucial report to make.”

“No complaint?” Dash inquired, brow lifted. “Slammer?”

The magnet bobbed affirmatively. It hadn’t occurred to Melody that Slammer was also a witness, but of course he was. Good. That was one report the Captain would trust.

Dash focused on Melody. “This must be a serious matter.”

“I have ascertained that all your top officers except those present are Andromedan hostages,” Melody said, anticipating his incredulous amazement. He would take a lot of convincing!

“You are very clever,” Dash said. “How would you like to marry me?”

Melody shook her head. “Perhaps you did not understand—” She halted. “What?”

Dash stood up and walked smoothly around the desk. He came to stand before her, ignoring the others. He put forth his hand to touch hers, and their auras overlapped. As always, there was the electric thrill. The sensation was so wonderful it made mental concentration difficult. “I realize my aura does not match yours,” he said. “But there are other things I offer. Travel about the galaxies, incarnation in a hundred unique forms. We can make love while winging through the warm mists of Zulchos, or swimming the nether-fen of Pemch. We can explore the tunnel library of Cluh, where every book is a complex of odors, sleep aboard the candy clouds of Hiaa. And we can read the Tarot in an Animation Temple—together.”

The thing was ludicrous, this proposal of permanent mating amidst the crisis of the ship. It was completely out of context. It was essential that immediate action be taken against the hostages, lest ship, fleet, segment, and galaxy be destroyed. Yet the force of the Captain’s aura, mind, and personality were such that she had to consider his proposal seriously. She wanted to throw herself into his human arms, to marry him—never to be separated.

But in a moment her knowledge of herself reasserted itself. She was no young buxom Solarian girl, but an old Mintakan neuter. Like the girl of cinders of Yael’s story-memory. She might dance with a prince—but at midnight she would revert to reality. You cannot fit my script, Melody thought sadly. And I dare not fit yours. Even though she desperately wanted to.

Dash had almost chained the lady—but failed because she was not a lady.

Perceiving her negation, Dash disengaged and returned to his desk. “There is one you did not test,” he said, “with your Tarot.”

Melody was the incredulous one, not he! She had not yet had a chance to tell him of her technique! “You knew what I was doing?”

“I know Tarot. I must admit that you are more proficient in it than I, however. It has been a pleasure to watch you perform.”

“But if you knew—you must have known about the hostages yourself! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dash leaned back in his web-seat. “Let me approach this obliquely. Let’s assume the Andromedans wish to subvert a galaxy by transfer infiltration. They possess the technique of involuntary hosting. Unfortunately, it still requires a more intense aura to suppress that of the host-entity, and it is also possible to counter hostage infiltration by the use of really intense auras. Thus the program is vulnerable. What do you suppose the Andromedans should do to safeguard their effort?”

It was Skot who answered. “Eliminate the Milky Way galaxy’s highest auras.”

Dash turned to him. “But how should they do that? They don’t even know the identities of those auras, and obviously lack the facilities to make a thorough search. Especially in the face of increasingly determined counterespionage.”

Now Llume joined the game. “They could set a trap. Bait it and wait for something to swim in.” She paused. “But what would be bait for an aura?”

Suddenly Melody felt a cold premonition. A trap baited for high-aura entities…

“Very clever, Dash,” she said crisply, though there was horrible pain inside her. “Or should I say, — of Andromeda?”

Skot jerked erect. “What?”

“The lady is remarkably perceptive,” Dash observed calmly. “In addition to having the highest aura in two galaxies. I consider it a privilege to have captured her.”

Skot stared at him. “You, Captain—hostage?”

The Captain nodded. “Indeed, yes, Skot of Kade. I am Bird of Dash, or a Dash Boid, as you might render it. Bird, boid, boyd, however you wish, for we are winged in our natural state.” He turned to Melody, and now there did seem to be a birdlike quality to his quick motion. “As you see, you are confined here, with my magnet, in my power. Your situation is hopeless. But Galaxy Andromeda is prepared to offer you most enticing terms, for we are great admirers of aura.”

Melody snorted. It was a gesture the human respiratory apparatus was good at. “I doubt you can offer any enticing enough, bird.”

“To begin with, the lives of your two friends,” Dash murmured, glancing meaningfully at Skot and Llume. “And of course your own.”

“At the price of our galaxy?” Melody demanded. She knew without asking that neither Skot nor Llume would capitulate to such a personal threat.

“You could actually salvage your galaxy,” Dash said. “With your help, we could master the Milky Way with the expenditure of much less energy than presently projected. Since we propose to recoup that energy of conquest from the substance of the Milky Way, we would thus salvage a significant portion, perhaps ten percent of the total energy mass of the Milky Way. That is well worth your consideration, Melody of Mintaka.”

He knew her identity! What an effective trap this had been! The best efforts of the segment loyalists had only procured her aura for Andromeda. Yet she could not accept defeat. She knew she lacked the straight raw courage Skot had, but she had to resist somehow. “If I yield to you,” she said, “my galaxy may die. If I oppose you, my galaxy may live. We defeated Andromeda once before.”

“And you might defeat us again—were you free to oppose us. But this is not among your options.” Dash made a little winglike motion with his two hands, as of options flying away. “You may join us, and salvage an amount equivalent to the entire segment of Etamin. In fact, I believe I can commit my galaxy to sparing that very segment in exchange for your voluntary services. Or you can suffer immediate destruction. I believe you are reasonable enough to select the lesser penalty—for yourself, your friends, and your segment.”

He stood up again, moving in quick spurts, his gaze flicking about, his posture almost strutting. “And I hardly need to add, I would be extremely appreciative on the personal level. You are the finest Kirlian entity I have encountered, and you have a most remarkable mind considering your age and experience. I have prevailed upon the Dash Command of Andromeda to delay overt hostilities solely to enable me to obtain your cooperation. This is how important you are. My proposal of marriage between us is sincere. It can be arranged, with auras like ours.”

Again, Melody was horribly tempted. She would never again encounter an entity like Dash; she was certain of that. There were probably several higher male auras somewhere in the two galaxies, but he also had high intelligence and competence, and was not otherwise committed. She had waited all her life for a male like him. But if he were to learn her true age and status, he would find her a good deal less attractive. Only as Mintakans could they merge—and then, only once.

On that slender, almost irrelevant thread her decision was made. She knew that in her heart she had betrayed her galaxy, but circumstance rather than personal strength enforced her loyalty. “No.”

Dash sighed. “I do this with extreme regret, but you are too dangerous to set free. Slammer—”

“Sir!” Skot cried.

Melody glanced at him. A weapon had appeared in one hand—a Solarian laser pistol.

Dash shook his head. “You cannot possess a genuine metallic weapon. There was no signal as you entered.”

“I entered parallel to the magnet; my weapon was masked by that.”

“Shrewd. But you cannot react faster than a magnet, and your weapon will not hurt Slammer.”

“True. But I can burn off your mouth before you can complete the order.”

What affected Melody most, even in this tense situation, was her realization that neither was bluffing. Dash really would order the magnet to kill, and Skot really would fire his weapon. Melody herself would not have had the nerve to do either, despite the stakes. As a conspirator, as a warrior, she was a washout; she understood what needed to be done, but lacked the gumption to do it. She felt weak, as though about to fault. This was not the first time she had reacted to news of a threat with foolish weakness, yet—

“Stand up!” Yael cried. “If you fail, we’re all dead!”

Shamed for the moment, Melody stiffened her spine, and fought off her faintness.

Dash would not be balked. “In a moment the magnet will realize that you are threatening me. Then it will act anyway.”

“No. It is assigned to protect Yael of Dragon. I am not threatening her.”

But Dash was threatening her, Melody knew. How would Slammer react to that? Could she somehow…?

Dash nodded. “It seems I underestimated you, Skot of Kade. You were reserved as our lone nonhostage, in case Etamin made a surprise verification of aural identities before we were ready to act. It appears that was our mistake.”

“I don’t get it,” Yael said. “Why doesn’t the Captain just touch that button on his desk to call for help?”

The distraction of the question helped to firm Melody’s wavering resolve. “Because if he makes one move toward the desk, he’ll be shot. All he can do is talk— and if he says the word ‘Slammer’ he’ll be shot anyway.”

“Then why doesn’t Skot just shoot him now and be done with it?”

“Because then we’d all be locked in this office with a murder on our hands and ten angry hostages outside. We have to deal with Dash without overt violence— somehow.”

“I’m glad you know what you’re doing,” Yael said.

Of course Melody had no idea what she was doing. She had formulated the rationale of the tactical situation only when challenged to do so. What a mess she had gotten them all into! A professional agent would have found some better, safer way to deal with the crisis. Melody could only watch.

“Stand well clear of that desk,” Skot said. “Llume, roll to the desk and touch the door release. But first use the desk monitor to check the location of the hostages aboard this ship; they may already be waiting in ambush for us. We’re going to eliminate every one of them—quickly.”

There, Melody realized, was a leader speaking. While she stood frozen in indecision and fear, Skot was acting with force and effect.

“Your effort is futile,” Dash said. “Even if you killed every one of us, you could not affect the hostages in power on the other ships of the fleet. If you messaged Imperial Outworld, you would accomplish nothing; the very resistance movement that sent Melody here has been routed out. No nucleus of loyalists remains on the planet. We have nullified them and the Society of Hosts.”

Oh, no! Melody thought. The Colonel of Ice Cream and Flotsam of Polaris, betrayed by what they had tried to do for her, for their galaxy.

Llume moved toward the desk. “Around the other side!” Skot cried, too late.

For as she passed between Skot and the Captain, Dash cried: “Slammer—revert!”

Skot fired, but Dash was already diving for his desk. He collided with Llume, bouncing off her resilient Polarian torso. She remained between him and Skot, balking the shot. Slammer shoved forward, hesitating, since Llume had not actually attacked the Captain.

The magnet was back under the direct command of the Captain. Slammer had never comprehended the intricacies of transfer and hostaging; he took his orders from the apparent master. Melody’s efforts to tame him had been well conceived, but vain.

“Yael of Dragon!” Dash screamed. “Slammer k—”

Skot’s beam lanced into his mouth. A front tooth exploded with the heat, ruining the handsome face, and the Captain fell.

Slammer flew across the room, too fast to avoid. During the episode of romance and fatherhood the magnet had seemed friendly, and Melody had lost her initial fear of him. Now, abruptly, she remembered exactly how dangerous he was. The magnet was no pet!

Dash had done it! He had tried to kill her!

Slammer passed between Skot and Melody and smashed into the wall. The metal bulged under the impact, and one side tore partially free of the door.

Melody stood paralyzed. Now she understood references in the Tarot about “slow motion” effects in some species during the severe stress. Mintakans did not experience this, but the human host certainly did. To see, to comprehend, to be unable to react…

Skot fired at the desk controls. Sparks splayed up as the beam cut through the delicate mechanism. Slammer hesitated again. Was it obliged to defend a desk?

“The magnet’s confused!” Skot called. “There are magnetic effects of the short circuit on the desk, and it doesn’t know what represents the most immediate threat. You girls get out while you can; I’ll try to cover for you.”

Melody realized that they had already been saved by the magnet’s confusion: Dash had been under attack by Skot, but had ordered Slammer to go after Melody. Slammer had thus split the difference between them, the compromise of imperatives, and so had hit neither and smashed instead into the wall. What awful power the thing possessed!

But the confusion would not last long. Had Dash been able to complete his order, naming the precise action, Slammer would have carried it through. Melody had been lucky—once. They had to flee. What that could gain she could not see, but so long as she were alive and free, there was a chance. Maybe she could hide in the crew section of the ship, smuggle out a warning to Etamin— no, that was no good—well, something…

Melody scrambled for the wall. Slammer jerked toward her, but Skot fired at the magnet, distracting it. A spot glowed white on the surface of the globe. Those lasers were only light, but what a lot of heat that thin beam packed! Then Dash groaned; he was not dead, but he was badly injured. Melody felt a kind of relief. Slammer moved over to his master.

Too bad the magnet had not been equipped to comprehend the truth! His real master had already been eliminated, supplanted by an inimical alien aura, possessed by a demon intellect. On the other hand, at least now Dash could not give Slammer a direct verbal order.

Melody put her fingers into the crack between the wall and door. She shook the door back and forth. Suddenly a catch gave way, and it swung open. She and Llume moved out.

There was no one in the hall. “Come on, Skot!” Melody cried.

“I have to cover your retreat!” he called back. “Move!”

Bold, suicidal, determined spacer! They moved. Melody feared that she would never see Skot of Kade again, but she had no choice.

9. God of Hosts

—so quadpoint tried to assume power!—

*he received no concurrence*

—I would have been satisfied if he had then it would have been off my wings—

*why did you miss the council meeting?*

— ast, I was in pain of aura I went to the shrine of our god aposiopesis and prayed for insight—

*do you refer to an ancients’ site?*

—do you call them that? aposiopesis means that ellipsis of communication that one is unable to present so it is with the ancients they have so much to inform us, yet they never quite convey it that entity who comprehends the content of aposiopesis shall be exalted—

*did you comprehend it?*

—I? you blaspheme! I comprehended nothing—

*then do you propose to yield power to quadpoint?*

—there may come a time when power shifts from sphere dash to sphere quadpoint, but that occasion is not yet—

*not as long as you control the major ancient sites, so that you are best able to worship aposiopesis*

—you are perceptive, ast!—

*yet we cannot withhold action hour much longer*

—no, not much longer but the dash command in segment etamin is about to secure for our use an aura capable of unlocking the key to aposiopesis then shall true victory be ours! surely that is worth a small delay of schedule—

Melody ran and Llume rolled down the hall. “Where do we go?” Melody gasped. This human host was good for short bursts of power, but tired rapidly under sustained output.

“Where they least suspect,” Llume answered. “Let me carry you; this host has greater velocity.”

Llume circled her tail about Melody’s waist and lifted. The tail was amazingly supple and strong. They rolled down the hall at a horrifying rate. But this was good: They would soon be farther from the scene of action than the hostages would suspect. It was also painful: Melody’s feet kept banging against the handholds set into the wall.

They were going toward the innership storage area, where the wooden barriers were. That would help—except that there was another magnet there. If all the magnets were put on the trail…

But Llume drew into a separate room on the near side of the barrier. She set Melody down. “This is where metal for the magnets is kept,” Llume explained. “They do not require it, except when injured or growing, so this area is safe. There is a chute to the main feeding area and from there are many channels to the outer ship. We can swim through—” She broke off as her ball lifted from the deck.

Melody heard it too: the keening of a magnet traveling at high speed. The labyrinth of narrow passages made it hard to tell how close it was, but it was coming nearer. The sound sent a chill into her.

“Slammer is looking for us,” Melody whispered. “How I wish I had gotten him tamed!”

“I will divert him,” Llume said. “You are the most important; there is no other aura like yours. Go to the crew section, seek a communications unit. Somewhere there must be loyalists who have not been caught, or they would not need this fleet to threaten the planet.”

“Yes,” Melody agreed. She could think of no better course.

“Swim well!” Llume whispered against Melody’s hand. Then she was off down the hall, her ball touching the wall above the handholds to make a noise to attract the attention of the pursuit.

“Swim well!” Melody echoed, tears in her human eyes. There was something especially touching about the words, suggestive as they were of Llume’s origin in the deep waters of her home planet of Sphere Spica. That powerful aura, such a perfect match for Melody’s own—why did this savagery have to be? They both knew the sacrifice Llume had made; her chances of survival were slender.

But if somehow they both survived, there would be a debt between them. When one entity saved the life of another…

Melody could not dawdle, however poignant her thoughts. To delay was to die. She went to the chute, then hesitated. This course was too simple, too obvious, and she had just thought of a better alternative. Across the wooden barrier, not far away, was the transfer unit. If she could get to it, she might transfer herself to an Outworld host without the hostages knowing, locate some powerful loyalist via a Tarot reading, and give warning directly.

But that could be a very dangerous alternative. In a room like this she could hide, at least for a while, and dodge. The magnet might be fast, but its mass prevented instant maneuvering, however it might appear at close range. Too many turns at speed, and it would tire; she had observed that in Beanball. All things, from civilizations down to amoebas, were subject to the limitations of energy. But in the halls, straightaways, she would be visible and vulnerable.

Unless there were a way to confuse the magnet. To make it look for her in the wrong place. Not by sacrificing more friends—apart from the fact she was out of friends, having permitted two to throw away their lives for her!—but by some mechanical means…

She looked at the cartons of metal. For the magnets, to build their bones. It had to be highly magnetizable stuff. The magnets perceived people by their auras; a low-aura person was little more than furniture. And they obviously could not discern aural families, for then Slammer would have known the significance of the change in the Captain. (And why hadn’t Melody herself realized what an actual strength of 175 meant, in a person listed at 150? The magnets were no stupider than she!) There must be a magnetic component to an aura, a trace overlap that the creatures could detect, that remained stable even when an alien aura of greater intensity took over.

Sometimes magnetism could be transferred by proximity, a little like sympathetic vibrations in music, or companion analogies in Tarot. This metal…

She tore into the nearest carton with her inadequate human hands. It was filled with slender metal rods. She drew one out. It was unprintable material, all right; she could feel the partial channelization of her aura in its vicinity. Ideal for her purpose!

She held the rod by its ends and concentrated. More of her aura passed through it, aligning the molecular structure. It was not much, for an aura was a very diffuse thing, even one as intense as hers. But even the barest smell of her aura might deceive the magnet. It was certainly worth the try.

She set the rod down and took out another. As she held it and concentrated, she explored other facets of the problem. Because the magnets oriented on an aspect of aura, and aura did not extend far from the host, the creatures would not be able to perceive her from very far away. In fact, beyond a certain distance, she should be able to see the magnets far better than they could perceive her.

The trouble was, the halls were metal—and narrow. A magnet could shoot the full length, and if Melody were anywhere in that hall, there was no way she could escape detection and destruction. Perhaps they had been designed with just this sort of thing in mind. The magnets could cruise up and down with such velocity that she was bound to be caught. So her long-distance vision would not help her much, unless she happened to be at an intersection and could get far enough out of the magnet’s path before it passed. Even then, it was a deadly gamble, for the thing might turn into the new passage. Or two magnets might approach, one in each passage.

But her charged rods might give her the chance she needed. The magnet could be confused.

Her life depended on it. “Lord God of Hosts,” she breathed, “be with us yet.”

“Is it safe to come out now?” Yael inquired.

Melody jumped. “I forgot all about you, child! Did you enjoy the action?”

“No,” Yael admitted. “When the shooting started, and I saw that it was all-the-way real, I was so scared I just… hid. I never thought adventure would be like this.”

“I was afraid it would be like this,” Melody said. “I really didn’t have much time to get scared—but I’m terrified now.”

“That’s my terror you feel!”

Oh? That was possible, Melody realized. “Unfortunately, there is more coming. We may not survive.”

“I thought I liked adventure,” Yael said. “But when I saw what a heel that captain really was, and that magnet—”

Heel: a Solarian portion of anatomy, back of the foot or of the shoe covering that foot. That portion whose weight would fall on whatever was below. Implication: The man’s whole personality resembled the crushing force of such stepping-on, and an attitude heedless of the sensitivities of others. One who used and deceived others without regret.

“The Captain’s not a heel,” Melody said. “He is fascinated by your body and my aura, but he is the dedicated agent of a hostile power. His personal interest conflicts with his duty. He tried to bring them into alignment, and failed, so now the stronger loyalty governs.”

“Heel,” Yael repeated firmly, though her mood had changed.

“To do otherwise would make him a traitor to his galaxy.”

“Heel,” Yael said again. “Not him, now. You.”

Melody almost dropped the rod. “Me?”

“You don’t love him. You analyze him without caring. You made him make love to me thinking it was you. You took his gift of the Tarot cube, but you didn’t give anything back. You wouldn’t go with him when he asked you. You let Skot and Llume sacrifice themselves. You wouldn’t even save our segment—”

Yael halted. She was crying, and the tears coursed down Melody’s cheeks. Where was the truth?

Melody had been sorely tempted by Dash’s offer; but a combination of factors had balked her acceptance. Not least among them was the horror of accepting reprieve for her segment at the price of the rest of her galaxy. She thought she had done right, but she wasn’t sure. And how could she expect Yael to comprehend the complex weighing of values that was involved? Sometimes a principle, such as the greatest good for the greatest number, required the painful sacrifice of purely personal considerations.

She took a new rod. It resembled a wand, as in the Tarot Suit of Energy. That suit suggested life and work, while the Ten of Wands signified oppression. But this was not the tenth rod; she was dissembling. This was the fifth rod, and it signified competition and strife. How fitting!

“Oh, damn your Tarot!” Yael cried. “Don’t you have any feelings for yourself?”

And suddenly, surprising herself, Melody told her: “My personal feelings died in Sphere Mintaka when I was your age. Now I am an old neuter. I cannot love an alien male; it would destroy me.”

Yael was silent.

“We don’t have sexes in Mintaka. We reproduce by budding; any two entities joining to form the new shoot. Our sexual identity is only a convention, a convenience in dealing with other Spheres whose creatures don’t comprehend our changeability. As young entities we are neuter; as mature ones we are female until we first bud. Thereafter we are male, to one degree or another. I—lost my prospective mate, and chose never to give up my status for a lesser entity. So I am, in your terms, an old maid. Or as we put it in my culture, I have nine feet.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Don’t you understand, girl? Your female nature is protected for the duration of your life; you will always be as you are now, only older. If I mated now, not only would I be false to my lost love—I would become a male.”

“God of Hosts!” Yael cried, appalled. “I can’t believe that… but I feel its truth in your mind. You can’t—”

“I can’t love,” Melody finished simply. Temporarily numbed by her confession, she took up the sixth rod.

Now Yael was contrite. “I’m sorry. I—”

“You didn’t know. I should not have told you. I know the concept disgusts you.”

“I mean about the—the heel business. I’m frightened and mixed up and I didn’t really mean it. I really like March better than the Captain, even if he weren’t Andromedan, and—”

March—the crewman they had met on the shuttle coming in. Low Kirlian, low rank, an exile of some sort new to space, pretty much an average Solarian. Of such stuff was a girl like Yael’s ambition fashioned. Where was he now?

Yet Yael had not responded to the sex-change matter. That was answer enough. The concept did disgust her.

Armed with the six rods, Melody moved out. She headed directly for the nearest barrier. Since chance would probably determine her interception by the magnet, her best strategy was to minimize her exposure.

But just in case: She set the first rod at the entrance to the storeroom. “Ace of Wands… the beginning,” she murmured to Yael. “If Slammer passes this way, it may think I’m in this room.”

She walked rapidly down the hall, trying to keep her progress silent. Her shoes insisted on clattering. She stopped, drew them off, and tucked them into the crook of her left arm along with the five remaining rods. Now she could move quietly.

She turned a corner—and almost ran into Hath of Conquest, the first Solarian officer she had interviewed via Tarot, and found to be Hath of *.

Melody tried to bluff, hoping the man had yet learned about the events in the Captain’s office. She was still wearing her provocative clothing, fortunately. She made a little forward bow, exposing her cleavage. “Good day, sir.”

Hath hesitated. Then his hand shot out to grasp her arm. “Yael of Aura, come with me.”

He knew! Melody had one arm taken with the rods and shoes, the other captive to his strong hand. She felt helpless. She tilted back her head to look at his face…

And remembered the weapon the Imperial Outworld authorities had given her. Two tubes set within her nostrils, positioned so as not to interfere with normal breathing. She had forgotten them entirely during the fracas at the Captain’s office. Some presence of mind she had under pressure! All she had to do was wrinkle her nose and snort a gust of air, activating the mechanism…

No! Beneath the alien presence was the real Hath, the involuntary host. She could not bring herself to destroy that captive, and she could not kill the Andromedan without also killing the Solarian. Maybe that was what had blocked off her memory when the Captain exposed his Sphere—identity—though by now he might be dead anyway. Or Skot might be dead. Or both. All the skills and knowledge that had so impressed her. The real Captain might be the entity she could love, if she ever could allow it.

No, that was untrue. It was the Andromedan Dash that fascinated her, forbidden as that was. He knew Tarot and he had a charisma that the mere Solarian entity could never match; she was perversely certain of that. And it was Dash of Andromeda who had professed his love for her. Why should he have done that, had it not been true? Could she be certain that he had intended to order her death? Maybe he had been about to order Slammer to “keep Yael from leaving.” She knew now that she never could have hurt him, though her galaxy hang in the balance.

Yael’s charge against her had been false. Far better had it been true, for Melody had been on the verge of betraying her galaxy for purely personal reasons. Only her Mintakan nature had prevented it. No credit to her, for her loyalty!

But now she was captive, or virtually so. She had been so preoccupied by the threat of the magnet that she had forgotten the threat of the hostages themselves.

Her thoughts had moved explosively; it had been only a moment. “Yael… do you know how to fight?”

“Are you kidding?” Yael replied tremulously. “All backvine farmers can fight. And their kids too. Or they don’t grow up alive.”

“Then take over.” And Melody let slide control.

“Gee, thanks!” Yael said sarcastically. “You sure called my bluff. But I remember when a man grabbed me like this, once, and I—”

Yael’s head dropped down, then rammed forward into Hath’s stomach. The air whooshed out of the man, and he fell back, gasping, letting go of the arm. Yael stiffened that hand and sliced it into the side of his throat. He slumped against the wall, trying to grab her around the waist. Her dress began to tear. Yael shifted her weight so as to bring up her knee.

“No!” Melody cried, fathoming the girl’s intent and diving in to thwart it. “You’ll kill him!” For the knee would have smashed into the man’s face and perhaps split his head against the metal wall.

“Near killed that other man,” Yael said. “That was one time I didn’t get punished, ’cause they were saving me for—”

Melody took over and ran down the hall. She still held her rods and shoes. “You certainly do know how to fight! But we won’t catch another hostage by surprise.”

“We won’t need to. There’s the wooden tunnel.” They had made it! Slammer could not follow. Her nose-weapon would deactivate the magnet guard (maybe), and she would transfer to Imperial Outworld before the hostages knew she was gone. Then Segment Etamin could act.

She paused. How could they act? Most of the offensive might of the segment was right here in this fleet. Andromeda had evidently concentrated here, knowing that the ships could dominate the worlds of the segment. Probably the same thing was going on in every segment of the galaxy. Control the fleets, and through them the Imperial worlds, and through those the vassal-Spheres— what an efficient way to maximize the effect of comparatively few hostages! Once the fleets were captive, the planets hardly mattered. In fact, they could be virtually ignored. The Andromedan technicians would set up their energy-robbing mechanisms and start draining the galaxy, and the planets would simply disintegrate along with their suns. Or whatever it was that happened. Melody was no energy expert, but did know that life in the galaxy would be wiped out long before significant deterioration of matter occurred.

The real battle was right here. If she gave up this ship, she might as well give up the galaxy.

She turned about. “Hey!” Yael protested.

“I can’t transfer out.” Melody said. “It would leave you helpless before the hostages.”

“I never thought of that! This isn’t mattermission; I can’t go with you! I’m stuck here on this ship.”

“That’s right. We have to make our fight right here.”

“But we can’t! We’ll just get killed!”

“You fought pretty well a moment ago.”

“That’s not the same. When a man grabs me, I know what to do, one way or another. But in a long-range campaign I’d be helpless.”

Probably an accurate assessment. But Melody put the best face on it. “Not if we work together. We’ll capture the hostages one by one—and transfer them out. Then we’ll have the real officers back again. The more we do, the more help we’ll have, until we can recapture the ship.”

“Yes! Let’s go drag Hath to the transfer unit and—”

“I think it would be better to start with the Captain,” Melody said. “After we do it once, the other hostages will know what we’re up to. If we begin at the top, he can order the others to the unit before they catch on.”

“Besides which,” Yael said in that wise way of hers, “you’re worried about the Captain. You don’t want him hurt.”

“I will do what is necessary!” Melody snapped.

They turned a corner—and there at the far end of the hall hovered a magnet.

A thrill of terror ran through Melody, and she was sure it wasn’t all her host’s emotion. She set the second rod in the intersection and hurried on down the right-angle passage.

“All hands!” the ship’s wall speakers blared suddenly. “Be on alert for Solarian female Yael of Dragon. She is an aural agent who attacked the Captain. She is dangerous; do not attempt to capture her physically. Merely advise her locations; the magnets will rendezvous.”

“Oh-oh,” Yael said. “We’re in trouble already. I’m terrified.”

“So what else is new?” Melody inquired in the girl’s own vernacular. What use to continue passing the burden of fear back and forth? They had to keep functioning regardless—or die. “But my fear for my galaxy is greater than my fear for myself, so I’m blocking out as much of the emotion as I can.” She moved on… and was surprised to discover that her fear diminished. Did her rationale actually make sense?

And they met another hostage.

Acting on inspiration, she threw one of her shoes at him. The man ducked, thinking it a more formidable weapon, and tumbled to the floor. But as he fell, he bawled: “Subject spotted in inner passage, coordinates—”

Yael got to him before he finished the numerical designation. This time she swung a rod. It cracked into his head, rendering him silent.

“For someone afraid of action,” Melody remarked, “you do very well.”

“I like action,” Yael replied. “I just hate danger. Hand-to-hand I understand, but lasers and things like that are awful. And I’d sure rather fight a man than a magnet.”

“Agreed.” Confidence was being restored.

Suddenly they heard the high keening of a magnet’s swift progress. Apparently the partial coordinates had given it enough of a clue as to where they were.

The thing came around the bend. It wasn’t moving with the blinding velocity of which it was capable; it was questing, not attacking. But Melody was trapped in the hall, and could not outspeed it. The moment it came within range…

Melody threw a rod at the magnet: rod against sphere. The metal stick clattered on the deck and spun to a stop.

“What’s the third wand stand for?” Yael asked nervously. They both knew that if the ruse failed, they were done for, but the immediate horror of incipient death had been blocked out, leaving the minor distractions.

“Enterprise,” Melody said. “Strength. Cooperation.”

The magnet came close. It was not Slammer; its painted decorations differed. Melody wondered fleetingly whether the creatures objected to the indignity of such designs, as though they were mere beach balls. Probably they simply didn’t take notice.

Suddenly the magnet shot forward, then backward, over the rod. It had evidently expected something larger. Now it hovered above the rod in confusion.

“It works!” Yael cried jubilantly, and there was a sensation associated with this trifling victory wholly out of proportion to the reality. For their situation remained desperate.

“For the moment,” Melody said, relieved. “But it won’t last long. Let’s get moving.”

They moved. They had escaped a magnet—once. The luck might be short-lived—like them.

Melody started down the last passage to the Captain’s office. She had distributed two more rods strategically along the way, and had only one left.

Another magnet appeared.

It was cruising toward her at a fast clip. She started to backtrack, but she was exhausted from running and her bare feet were sore.

She hurled the last rod with all her strength. It clattered far down toward the magnet, but this time the creature paused only momentarily, then continued on. It had figured out the nature of this ruse. No hope of escaping it now.

Melody tilted back her head, squeezed her nose, and snorted. Would her secret weapon work?

Two beams speared out. One was pale yellow, the other pale blue. They converged about two body-lengths ahead of her.

She pushed at her nose with her fingers. The beams veered. Their point of convergence shot forward.

The oncoming magnet intercepted that point. The beam-light flashed purple, not green, on its surface. There was a strange crackle and sizzle.

The magnet exploded. Its fragments ricocheted off the walls.

Melody hunched down as shrapnel flew past her. One jagged piece of metal struck her leg. She fell forward, clutching her torn flesh as blood welled out. It hurt terribly.

Suddenly she had become much more clearly aware of the specific meaning of danger. Her host’s red blood dripping on the deck spoke with a force that matched all the rest of this adventure. This was the beginning of dying!

She had slain the magnet. But most of its remains lay jagged and smoking in the hall ahead. Her bare feet and injury made approach to the Captain’s office hazardous at the moment. And what could she do, even if she did get there? She had to crawl back toward her own cabin where she might be able to bandage herself.

Yet what a weapon she had been given! Skot’s laser had heated only one part of the surface of a magnet; this twin-beam had blasted it apart!

“Lord God of Hosts,” she moaned. “Be with us yet…”

She reached up to grasp the handholds of the wall, drawing herself erect. Hitherto these holds had been a nuisance; now they were essential! She was able to move along with fair dispatch by holding and hopping, but her wounded leg hurt with every motion and dripped more bright red blood on the floor. She was leaving a trail… of her own life-stuff.

“I’m not doing well by your body,” she told Yael apologetically. “Or by my mission. I don’t know how we’re going to save the galaxy now.”

“I don’t know either,” Yael admitted. “Oh, it hurts!” She was referring more to the leg than the galactic defeat, but Melody didn’t choose to quarrel. “Do you think we might find some way to blow up the ship? That might alert the authorities.”

“We don’t have the strength to even figure out how,” Yael said. “We’re losing blood, getting faint…”

It was true. Only an iron will kept Melody moving; iron that was already melting. She knew that her intense aura had a kind of healing property that enabled this body to continue functioning; Yael alone would have collapsed already. “Just a little time,” Melody said. “Get to cabin, bandage, rest… then we can think, plan—” She collapsed.

Melody was unconscious only a moment. The human body adapted to strife. When its systems malfunctioned, it became horizontal. Then more of the depleted blood supply reached the brain, improving its performance. A fail-safe mechanism. Intriguing; Mintakans lacked this faculty, as they did not possess blood.

“God of Hosts,” Yael said. She was praying. Melody lay and listened, suffering a private revelation. The girl believed. She really did honor the God of Hosts, and believed in its beneficence, contrary to all reason. Yael thought the god would intervene to save her. No—that the god would safeguard her interests, intervening if that were required, letting her perish if that were best. And if she died, that god would take her into its bosom of hosts and recompense her for all her pain and doubt. It was an altogether naive and charming belief.

“And save Melody too,” Yael concluded.

That simple, sincere addendum struck Melody like the impact of a magnet. Despite everything, Yael had blessed Melody with her good will. Yael cared. Even as she lay dying.

“I wish I had your faith,” Melody said.

“You have it. You call it Tarot.”

A second impact, as hard as the first. Melody’s god was Tarot! Why had she never realized that? She prayed to her Tarot every day, calling it meditation.

“Yes, I worship the God of Tarot,” Melody said. “Do you resent that?”

“Why should I? It’s the same God.”

The same God. Melody could not deny it.

She gathered her strength and drew them up. “God is with us,” Melody said. “I have to believe that.”

After that the journey to the cabin was easier. The bleeding had slowed, and Melody’s consciousness remained clear. The door opened at her touch and slid into its frame. Now she realized that it was merely a convenience door and not airtight. When the atmospheric composition of the ship was changed, the air of the regular cabins changed with it, but the Captain’s office could be isolated. The moment the hostages gave up their present strategy of pursuit with the magnets, they could trap her with certainty by putting knockout vapor into the air system. They could protect themselves by donning masks. The odds were more against her than she had thought! But if she could mend herself and get to the Captain’s office and get Dash to the transfer unit…

There was the keening of another magnet traveling toward them at high speed.

Melody leaped into the cabin, hoping to seal it behind her before the magnet arrived. The metal would not hold the thing back long, but maybe she could catch it with her nose-beams as it burst through.

But her bad leg gave way, and she suffered a stab of pain that brought her to the floor halfway through the portal. She rolled and drew her legs up, her dress falling up in a fashion that would have invited impregnation in the presence of a male. She tried to get one hand on the panel as her feet cleared it, but could not.

The magnet shot into the room. It passed directly over her, stopped, and hovered in the center of the room. It was Slammer, and she knew why he hesitated: He had been deceived too many times by the rods she had scattered about. This time he wanted to be sure of his quarry before crushing it.

Slammer moved. But not as fast as before. Melody shoved her legs, propelling her body across the floor— and the magnet missed her. He was tired, after all his searching; he was running low on fuel and had to conserve!

Melody tried to orient her nose, but could not do it while lying on the floor, half on her side. Slammer was coming over her, ready to crush her between his body and the floor, where his magnetism was strongest. She reached up and flung her arms about him, dragging him down with her weight so that he could not get momentum for a strike. She weighed twice as much as the magnet and he was heated from his own exertions. Maybe she had a chance—

Slammer jerked back, but she clung, her fingernails scratching across his surface. Parts of the creature were rough, where his eating and breathing vents were; that gave her purchase. Her feet dragged along the deck, but she retained her hold.

Now the magnet was desperate. He shook back and forth violently, and puffs of burning hot air escaped from his vents. But still she hung on, knowing it was her only chance. Her face was against his metal, assisting her grip. But she could not get her nose focused on him.

Slammer dragged her to the wall and started banging her hands. Sudden pain shot up her arms; her fingers were being crushed! Then they turned, and it was her shoulder and head getting smashed. Little white sparks flew up inside her eyes; she was getting knocked out. But her albatross-weight was wearing the magnet down; his motions were slowing, and it was descending to the floor. Soon she would have him…

Slammer made a final effort. He jammed toward the wall, crushing her arm, then spun and pulled violently away. Melody threw her legs up to enclose him, but the blood from her reopened wound leaked out over his surface, and her hand slipped. Suddenly the magnet squirted free, leaving her to collapse.

She had almost beaten him. Almost. Now, her hands, arms, leg, and head hurting, she could only lie where she was. She lacked the strength to go after the creature.

Slammer paused across the room, recharging his power. The struggle had weakened him, but not quite enough. Blood was smeared on his surface, the four scrape-marks of her last despairing handhold forming a fingerpainting. One other scrape-mark curved below, like the scythe-blade of the Grim Reaper in the Death-card of the Tarot.

There was a stirring in the corner. The lid to the nest lifted, and little Beanball emerged. He started toward her.

Oh, no! “Beanball, stay out of this!” Melody screamed, trying to pull herself to her feet, but failing. The little magnet did not comprehend many human words yet, but should get the gist. If he came to her now, he could be crushed accidentally as she was struck. Or at least he would perceive her demise: a horrible thing for any youngling. Melody loved Beanball in her fashion, and knew that love was returned. “Get back in your nest! Close the lid!”

But Beanball continued, arriving just as Slammer stabilized. Melody had learned to read the reactions of magnets to some extent; Slammer was about to strike again. He would launch himself from across the room, so that she had no chance to stop him, and this time he would not miss the mark. “God of Hosts!” she repeated, staring at the friend who had become Death.

Slammer moved—and so did Beanball, leaping forward in an amazing burst of vitality. The two met, the massive and the tiny—and it was the massive that bounced away.

Melody, resigned to death, stared. What had happened?

Yael comprehended first. “Beanball’s defending us!”

Because Melody/Yael was the primary parent the little magnet had known. They had brought him coal and metal, and talked to him and been moved by his little successes. They had cherished him. Slammer had been there too, but more aloof, so was not the primary loyalty. As Slammer honored the Captain, so Beanball honored Melody. It was the magnet way. She was a surrogate mother. And so when the crisis of choice came, Beanball had to protect her—even against his father. Obvious—in retrospect. She had tamed the wrong magnet!

Slammer had rebounded. No physical force from the tiny magnet could have accounted for that. It had to be a conscious decision on Slammer’s part. Given the conflict between his orders and the welfare of his son, he had chosen the stronger loyalty.

For Slammer was no longer attacking. He hovered quiescently. He could easily have gotten around Beanball, or thrown him out of the way with one magnetic twitch. But he could not change the little magnet’s devotion—and perhaps did not want to, knowing it was justified. Perhaps, despite the ferocity of Slammer’s actions, his ultimate loyalty had been based on an extremely narrow margin of decision—and now the lead in favor of the Captain had reversed.

“Are you with us, Slammer?” Melody asked, petting Beanball, hardly daring to believe her fortune.

Slammer nodded. No indecision for him, once the balance changed!

“Then you know that those who sought to kill me are false.”

Hesitation. Slammer’s decision had been based on a personal level, not a philosophic one.

“The Captain and the other officers are hostages,” Melody explained. “Captives of alien auras. Haven’t you noticed the changes in their imprints?”

Now the magnet nodded affirmatively. The change had not had significance for him before.

“Enemies have taken over their bodies. We must capture them and send away those enemies. Then your real masters will return. Do you understand?” Slammer nodded again, more positively. Melody drew herself upright, feeling good despite her bruises. “Then tell all the other magnets of this ship. You can do that, can’t you?” He nodded. “We must govern this ship until the real masters return.”

And Slammer was gone. Victory was theirs, for the magnets represented the ultimate disciplinary power aboard the ship. Whoever had their loyalty, had control.

The God of Hosts had answered.