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. Melo
dy 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—"