I have often called Helva my alter ego. "The Ship Who Sang" is my favorite story; I still cannot reread it without weeping, for I wrote it in an unconscious attempt to ease my grief over the death of my father, the Colonel. The other yams in the novel were therapy for other personal problems, none of which actually figure in the plots. So, although this tale should have been the starting point of a new volume about Niall Parollan and Helva, I don't really yet know if Helva will sing again. "Honeymoon" does tie up the one loose end which the majority of my readers have complained to me about.

well, that young Honeymoon "MAY I COME ABOARD, HELVA?".

Helva said yes without thinking because the traffic in technicians and Base officials attending to her refitting was constant. Then, she checked identity because while the voice was familiar, no technician would have couched such a formal request.

Rocco, Regulus representative for Mutant Minorities, was her unexpected caller. With the easy manner of one used to the protocol of brainbrawn ships, the Double M man saluted her behind the central column and sauntered into the lounge, looking about him with interest at the choice artifacts Niall had introduced, the circuit prints and cables draped about the control console, the pattern of dust and grit leading toward her engineering and cargo compartments.

"I've stopped apologizing for the mess," Helva said, "but the galley's intact if you don't mind serving yourself while Niall's not here..."

"I'm here because he isn't, Helva," Rocco said, refusing her hospitality with a courteous gesture and seating himself facing her panel.

"In which capacity? Double M, or Rocco?"

"Unofficially, but Rocco is always willing." Then he hesitated, biting the comer of his lip while Helva waited, amused that the suave, fashionably attired troubleshooter for Double M was at a loss for words. He'd had no block a scant seven days ago when he'd been needling Chief Railly before she'd extended her Central Worlds contract. "Let's just say that I had an interesting conversation yesterday which leads me to beg the indulgence of a chat-an unofficial chatwith you."

"On what subject?"

"Coercion?"

"Whose?" Helva was amused.

"Yours, primarily. Parollan's.. man can take care of himself."

Helva chuckled. "Now, Mr. Rocco, you were in Chief Railly's office that day."

Rocco impatiently brushed that side. "Yes, I heard the official line. They got you to extend your original contract with them... which was almost legal."

"Very legal, Rocco. I did some surreptitious checking myself. And I got them..."

Rocco held up his hand, peremptorily cutting her off. "Did or did not Railly deploy a detachment around you, effectively preventing you from lifting off if you'd so desired? And did or did not Parollan have to short out a perimeter fence to get to you?" "There was a little misunderstanding..." "Little?" Rocco's swarthy face darkened to emphasize that single explosion. "My dear Helva, I have my sources, too. Railly had the entire planetary security force, civilian and service, looking for Parollan."

"I had Broley on my side." Helva chuckled for the city shell person's cooperation had been involuntary. Broley still wasn't speaking to her because she hadn't opted for independent status and taken on one of the clients he bad lined up for her. "So you did. Do you now?" "Oh, he'll sulk a while longer, I expect." Rocco hitched himself to the edge of the couch. "Now, look, Helva, I know what it says on paper but I also know that Parollan's resignation from the Service is still in effect. Oh, he's brawning you to Beta Corvi, but there isn't anything contractual after that." "So?"

"Helva, I don't mean for you to be left high and dry. Especially with an incredible extension of debt which you must work off. And with Chief Railly overtly your enemy because of Parollan. Now that guy may have been a brawnbrain ship supervisor for the last twelve years, and bloody good at it from what I hear, but that doesn't mean he's going to be a good brawn. By anything left holy, Helva, it's a long way from telling to doing."

"Do you remember my last brawn, Teron of Acthion, that welltrained, physically stalwart twithead?"

Rocco gave a long sigh that ended with a grudging grin. "Okay, so he was a dud that BB School turned out by mistake. You can go too far in the opposite direction." Obviously Rocco felt she had with Parollan. "Seriously, Helva, that contract extension makes my skin crawl. You're committed to repaying almost 600,000 credits... by the latest figuring."

"You do have good sources, Rocco."

He grinned again, maliciously. "In Double M, I've got to. Look, there's a lot more to this whole affair than the fact that in a scant ten years you paid off your original indebtedness to Central Worlds for your early childhood care, the initial shell, education, the surgery needed to fit you into this ship, maintenance, and so forth."

"I paid off partly due to Niall Parollan, remember?"

"Granted, granted."

"And when this cyclevariant drive we're taking back to Beta Corvi gets approved, we'll be out of debt in next to no time."

"Not when, Helva. //. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I saw the reports on that cyclevariant drive, Helva. I heard what happened to the manned test ship."

Helva snorted with contempt. "Hamhanded fools."

Rocco would not be diverted. "I don't mean the fact that they inadvertently cycled the power source too high, Helva, I mean that curious discharge that is worrying the nuclear boys juiceless."

"Why do you think we're taking it back to Beta Corvi?"

"And thank the gods that you are." Rocco recrossed his neatly booted legs in a nervous fashion. "Whatever that particular force is, it's bloody dangerous. And no one seems to know why or how."

"They'll tell me." At least, she amended privately, she thought they would. If only because the use to which humans put their minor form of stabilized energy amused them. (And what did you do on Beta Corvi for an encore, Helva?) She was far from happy about having to go back to Beta Corvi, but the ends justified the means... she hoped.

To have a warp drive in her bowels! To soar when she'd been forced to plod in a plebeian fashion. And the hell with Rocco's "if"... although the if was a valid consideration. Still, she trusted the Corviki: she'd been a Corviki.

"Look, Rocco, that drive is worth a great deal of hassling and stress. Niall knows it. I know it."

"Why?"

"The cyclevariant is faster than light drive, it's warp. By being able to stabilize an unstable isotope at just the moment it is releasing its tremendous quantity of energy, the cyclevariant drive captures all that energy because the isotope doesn't dwindle downscale to a useless halflife. It remains at the constant highenergy peak. That output is controlled in its cycle of peak energy, and the rate of thrust-the speed of the ship powered that way-is determined by the ratio of cycles used at any given time. True, you can't lift offplanet on cv drive, and a ship has to be structurally reinforced."

"And that odd trail of particles?" Rocco asked sardonically. "Those unknown thingies that have thrown communications haywire, loused up astrogational equipment, not to mention the solar phenomena recorded in the systems through which that test ship ran?"

Helva was silent. She was less certain of how the Beta Corviki could cope with those emissions. Unless there'd been a simple perversion of the data?

"Then there's the old philosophical question: Is this trip really necessary? Is man ready for this sort of progress?"

"Rocco! I'd thought better of you." Helva was surprised as well as scornful. " 'If man were meant to fly, he'd've been given wings.' "

Rocco regarded Helva with great tolerance and some sadness. "Helva, in my job, I become painfully aware that some progress costs too much in terms of human adjustment, or emotional, psychological, or even physiological stress."

"On the pro side, look at the exploration potential for a hundred different minorities."

Rocco sighed. "I suppose we're committed to progress at any cost. Onward and upward for bigger, better, faster, smaller, tougher. However, back to my original topic, your coercion."

"There isn't any, Rocco."

"Oh? Have you any idea, Helva, how many circuits lead into this?"

"I know of a few, but I think you're going to tell me."

"Setting aside your understandable yearning to be the fastest virgin in the Galaxy-and you'll need the speed with Parollan aboard..."

"Tsk, tsk, jealous?"

"Or Parollan's wish to prove himself a better brawn than the prototype, we have dear Chief Railly, all set for that jump onto Central Worlds Council."

"Is that why he's been on our backs like a leech?"

"You didn't know? Tsk! Tsk on you, Helva. Yesiree ma'am! Since the civilian branch has blown it with their manned ship, think of all the glory accruing to one Chief Railly for getting the drive approved, of getting you, the very valuable and very well known 834 to extend her contract, thanks to his masterful handling of the negotiations."

Helva made a rude noise. "Parollan masterminded it."

"Undoubtedly he did, but Railly gets the official credit. Not only does Railly have a finger in your pie to be goldplated; Dobrinon has first whack at the biggest Xeno plum in psychological history; Breslaw is frankly starryeyed with visions of commanding the warpdrive squadrons."

"Rocco? What's in it for you?"

"Me?" Rocco made his eyes innocently wide.

"I'd've thought you'd be flogging me, too, to rescue the four I left behind me. -Oh, so that's it. Yes, they would be classed as mutant minorities."

"That's the kindest designation." Rocco cleared his throat.

"Yes, there was a lot of unfavorable publicity about them. I'd've thought the news value long since exhausted."

"It wasn't so much publicity, Helva," said Rocco, again biting the corner of his lip thoughtfully. One booted toe swung up and down. "No, society just doesn't like its members opting out of its grasp, particularly into a total alien form."

"Not to mention leaving their bodies behind." Helva had always wondered what had happened to the empty husks of Kuria Ster, Solar Prane, Chaddress of Turo, and... Ansra Colmer. But not so much that she could bring herself to ask. When she and the rest of the dramatic troupe had presented Romeo and Juliet to the Beta Corvi-in exchange for the stabilization of isotopes-they had had to use "envelopes" suitable to the methaneammonia atmosphere of the planet. A timer had been rigged in the transfer helmets to insure that that consciousness returned to its proper environment. After the final performance, four people had not returned and were encapsuled in the Beta Corvi envelope. For very good and understandable reasons, or so Xenologist Dobrinon would like her to believe.

"There has been considerable pressure, you know," Rocco was saying, "on both SPRIM and Double M to investigate their defection/emigration/temptation..." He shrugged at the euphemisms employed. "Or at least to bring back conclusive evidence that they are happy in their new lives."

"I know two who are-three. Solar Prane has a new body; Kuria couldn't care less about hers so long as it was near his; Chaddress had nothing to look forward to in retirement, and Ansra Colmer..."

Rocco eyed Helva keenly, expectantly. "And Ansra Colmer..."

"Oh, the Corviki knew how to handle her."

"Hmmm."

"But aren't you slightly in conflict with yourself, Rocco? I mean, you class shell people as mutant minorities, though strictly speaking I'm a cyborg-"

"Yes, Helva," Rocco sounded purposefully pathetic, "the boot does pinch." His foot in fact was swinging, which was an unconscious gesture that would intrigue the good Dobrinon. "I cannot reconcile coercing you to find out if the... flitting four were in any way coerced."

"I quite appreciate your dilemma, so I'll lift you off one horn. I do not, not even after all your interesting disclosures, consider myself coerced. Ah ah," for Rocco began to protest. "Pressured? Possibly, but I've been conditioned to a fine sense of responsibility, you see. I brought the equations for that nardy drive back to Regulus, and I inadvertently misplaced four passengers who were, you must admit, essentially my responsibility to convey thither and hither safely. I'd like some peace of mind on both counts."

"I'll forego knowing about our lost souls if you'll forego that drive."

"No way. I want that drive. How else can we pay oS my indebtedness?"

"I'll call foul for you?"

"Rocco, I'm surprised. Shocked! This cannot be the incorruptible..."

"Damn it, Helva, I want you out of that contract and out away from Parollan. He's dangerous!" Rocco was on his feet and pacing.

"Good heavens! Why?"

"He's got a fixation on you, a brawn fixation."

"Who told you that? Broley? Oh, fardles, Rocco! Because he had the Asurans extrapolate a solido of me from my genetic background?"

"You knew?"

"He had a set made of every BB ship he supervised."

Rocco pointed a finger at her. "You're different."

"Quite likely. He's my brawn. Bluntly, Rocco, you're making a tempest in a teacup."

"A fixation could be dangerous to you in space, Helva, in a man of Parollan's sexual appetite."

"That fixation reached critical... and passed. That's why Niall became my brawn. He's far more aware of the inherent dangers of a brawn fixation than you are, Rocco. Or Broley."

Rocco affected a shrug, but Helva suspected he was unconvinced.

"All right, Helva, we're back to Square One and I'll rephrase my initial question: Do you want what you now have, or were you mods to want it?"

"Hey, Helva," Niall said into the cornunit, "let the lift down."

"Think on it, Helva, and remember that you can count on my support if you feel that you have actually been constrained against your own best interests."

Niall's hearty "Helva, I got 'em," as he waved the grapelike cluster of circuit guards, dwindled off in surprise at seeing their guest. "Well, we're honored, Rocco?"

"My congratulations on your appointment, Parollan. I'll be following the exploits of the NH834 with renewed interest."

"I'll just bet you will." Niall's smile took the sting out of his slightly aggressive words.

"Fair enough," replied the Double M official, his own expression sardonic. He moved toward the airlock. "You are, you realize, very definitely in a minority."

"How so?" asked Niall, amused, as he neatly arranged the circuit guards on the gutted console and turned to face Rocco.

"My good Parollan, you are the only man who ever resigned from BB ship service to become a brawn."

"I'm no mutant."

Helva could hear the edge in Niall's voice, although generally his small stature didn't bother him.

"What is the definition of a mutant?" That was Rocco's exit line as the lift took him down, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

"Well, hump me, what was he after?" Niall asked.

"I gather he's been listening to Broley's gossip."

"And what is the gospel according to City Manager Shell Person Broley?"

"We're being coerced."

Niall scratched his ear, screwed up his face, and gazed out of the open airlock. Helva was situated by the immense Engineering sheds of the Regulus Base Complex. Niall had a clear view of the distant administration buildings at the opposite end of the plain. There were, as always, tremendous comings and goings of small ground vehicles and light helis. as well as slim BB ships.

Niall looked away from the airlock, toward her. Reetingly Helva wondered if Niall Parollan "saw" the titanium column behind which her encapsulating shell rested, or the solido the Asurans had made, extrapolating a mature human body from her genetic background.