"Not... not everything," he managed to say between gasps of laughter.

"Actually, Abu, the programming of the olfactory sensors does give me an indication of a human's reception of smells. If there's sulfur in the air, I'd know it, I assure you, as something distinctly unpleasant. As for taste, I can't miss what I haven't had," Helva said, hoping that Permut would stop being so prurient. He'd been good company up till now. "I would like to know how coffee tastes. Everyone seems to fancy it so above all other beverages."

Abu laughed. "I think it smells better than it tastes. Especially if you've got roasted beans and grind them fresh," her tone of voice dripped with gustatory pleasure.

"You know, I'd forgot that coffee is brewed from beans. I've only the containertype aboard."

"The best beans come from Ipomena in the Alphecan sector. I've a small supply given me by an admirer that I keep for special occasions."

"You do?" Permut asked, abruptly recovering his composure. "You do?" he repeated, sidling up to Abu and making such absurd expressions that she began to laugh. "I tell you what, Abu, purely to aid in Helva's education, I will partake of your Ipomenan brew and give her a critical opinion of the quality, aroma, flavor, savor..."

"Oh, you!"

Suddenly Niall's voice rang out in happy surprise. "Davo Fillaneser? But of course, twice welcome. Come on up, Davo. Helva!"

Niall's clarion greeting had effectively silenced the babble and all eyes were on the newcomer appearing from the air lock. Davo smiled and so played up his entrance, bowing with such elaborate flourishes of nonexistent cape and hat, that everyone applauded.

"Fillaneser played Beta Corvi with Helva. Only he came back," Niall said by way of introduction, and the actor was quickly surrounded. Davo cast a humorously despairing glance toward Helva, mouthing "I want to talk to you later," as he was borne away.

It wasn't until after Niall mendaciously declared that Railly'd imposed a one o'clock curfew on his parties and started shoving people out the hatch as quick as the lift could make the trip, that Davo had a chance to approach Helva.

"Any chance of speaking to you, Helva?"

"You mean, privily?"

Davo nodded with a mirthless smile for her Shakespearean language.

"That is, if Niall can clear the deck..."

"Preferably of himself as well. Or is that too much to ask?"

Circumstances, in the persons of the triplets who helped to clean up the party debris, abetted Davo's wish. Niall found himself, or so he said, obliged to be sure the girls had transport into the City.

"It is past pumpkin time for Cinderellas," she said, and Niall commended her to Davo's company, and disappeared with his giggling trio.

"Does he mean to take on all three of them, Helva?" Davo asked.

"I'm under the impression that they've got something cooked up,"'she replied, and then chuckled over her phrasing. How would Dobrinon interpret that Freudian slip? Davo guffawed, so Helva decided he'd been told about the shish kebab episode.

The actor's laughter faded though, and he took to pacing around the lounge. Helva waited. The next line was all his.

"I'd heard you'd paid off, Helva."

"Great heavens to Betsy, does everyone in the Galaxy know that?"

"You don't know how many friends you have, Helva, who make it their business to keep track of you."

"I'd heard you'd volunteered to go back to Beta Corvi for Dobrinon," she said, starting her own offensive.

Davo winced. "That's when they were sending that manned test ship with the cv drive."

Helva laughed. "Just as well you didn't go, Davo, you'd be coming back for the next nine years."

"That wasn't why I didn't go, Helva. I copped out at the last moment. Did Dobrinon tell you that?" Davo looked directly at her now, and she could see the excited glitter in his eyes, the tenseness of his jaw muscles. "I turned coward. I couldn't go through that again. As much as I wanted to find out how Kuria and Prane... and Chaddress were. Helva..." Davo's voice shook with barely contained emotion, "is it true? That you're being forced to go back?" The question tumbled out of his mouth and his tone was distraught. "How can they let you put yourself in jeopardy like that again? I mean, Helva, you have many important friends, powerful ones. All you have to do is let us know..."

Helva was so flabbergasted at Davo's concern, at his suggestion that she almost laughed.

"Davo, my very good friend, I am in no jeopardy."

"Now, look, Helva," Davo assumed a mantoman stance, "I don't care how many circuits are being tapped, who I have to buy or suborn, you-"

"Davo, where are you getting this notion from? Broley?"

"Broley?" Davo's surprise suggested that the City Shell Manager was not his informant. 283 "No, I don't guess you'd have any contact with the City Manager."

"I have spoken with him. He goes to all the plays," Davo admitted, "but not this trip."

"Well, then, where did you get this wild notion that I'm in any danger?"

"It's all over," and Davo made an expansive gesture. "You can't want to go back to Beta Corvi?" His convulsive shudder was not feigned; nor was the glint of terror in his eyes.

"Truthfully, no. But it's the only way I'll find out."

"Find out what, for the love of reason?"

"Oh, if the cv drive works or will blow the cosmos to bits with the particular emissions, if our friends... exist. Take it easy, Davo," she added gently as she saw the man working himself up to another explosion. "Let's say I'm willing to take a gamble... with my eyes wide open to the probabilities. Which do, after all, favor me. The stakes are high, and when you get right down to the welded seam, there's more than that cv drive to be vetted and lost souls accounted for. Tell me, in all this wild talk, what's the gen on Niall Parollan?"

Davo looked uncomfortable for a split second, and then only hesitant. He took a sharp deep breath and regarded her frowningly.

"I tell you, Helva, Parollan had a lot to do with our debriefing when we got back here after Beta Corvi. I liked what I saw of the man then. He had real sympathy for all of us-and he was very worried about the effects of the mission on you. Get right down to it, most of his questions during his interview with me had to do with you."

Helva fondly remembered Niall's abrasively diverting and restorative presence the night she'd come back... an empathy utterly shattered days later when he made known his opinion of her choice of Teron of Acthion as brawn: a wellsubstantiated opinion.

"What I hear about Regulus City now..." Davo summarized that in a long low whistle.

"Tell me, what's the betting on our length of partnership? On the success of our mission? On Railly's mak284 ing CW Council? And Breslaw hitting Chief?" With each of her questions, Davo's eyes opened wider.

"Damn it, Helva, the whole tone about you and Parollan, not to mention those others, is so... so disgustingly commercial, so sordid, that I had to see you. What I heard doesn't jibe with the Helva I know."

"Or the Parollan you've met."

"Right!"

"Do you agree that people under stress react more honestly than people in a party or gossip situation?"

"Certainly."

"So. Don't think I'm not highly flattered and touched by your concern, Davo. I am. But I think we, Niall and I, the NH834, are a winning combination."

"I certainly hope so, Helva. I certainly hope so."

Amusement bubbled up in Helva. "I wish you'd read that line with more convincing sincerity, Davo."

"I wish I felt it myself. I don't favor this part for you, Helva. And I'm not alone. Remember, gal, all you gotta do is shout."

"Shout in an ammoniamethane atmosphere?"

"Don't tell me you want to play a return engagement there, Fillaneser?" Niall asked from the lock.

"No entrance cues, Helva?" asked Davo, annoyed.

"This team can't operate on two levels, Davo, not and succeed."

The actor nodded. He extended his hand to Niall.

"I'll wish goodspeed and a safe trip home, Helva, Parollan."

That line did have the ring of sincerity.

"You weren't long about it," Helva said, relieved by Niall's return for several reasons she didn't care to probe.

Niall was peering out at the night, at Davo's descent, so Helva left the lock open until he gave a snort and turned back to the lounge, frowning as he surveyed it.

"No, when I got to the gate, the Yerries had been refueling so I let them take the girls on in. Besides," he stretched and yawned mightily, "I need my beauty sleep." He bent down to scoop up a container tucked against the end of a couch, lobbed it toward the disposal chute, dusting his hands as his shot hit dead center.

"And tomorrow, we skin you, m'love. And then..." He rubbed his hands with anticipation as he moved toward his quarters.

"Up, up, and away?"

"Yup!"

He stripped and washed with his usual neat despatch and then lay on his bunk, hands clasped behind his head.

"That was a real good bash," he murmured, eyes closed, a happy smile on his face. "Good night."

"Good night, sweet prince, and may..."

Niall's eyes flew open and he made a mockexasperated noise in his throat. "Will you never rid me of your Shakespeare saws? When I think of a perfectly good, wellbehaved ship consorting with ribald, rowdy actors... I cringe." But he yawned again and was asleep before his jaw closed.

Helva chuckled as she secured the lock, lowered all but her safety lights, and began her habitual nightly check. Suddenly it was too silent; too empty of Niall and his energy. He was sort of like having one's own private hurricane and he probably expended as much energy as the nardy cv drive could.

Would that thing work? And what accounted for Breslaw's pessimism? Had he rechecked some factor to a lower probability? Or was it the particle emission that troubled everyone? Even if the cv drive were feasible, the emissions could make it highly impractical in settled space, which would rule out its use as far as Helva was concerned. Unless of course they detached her to Search and Survey. But would that kind of longdistance lonely travel suit Niall Parollan?

Why had she been plagued with both Rocco and Davo today? And why had Abu asked about her two missing senses? She'd had them in the Beta Corvi envelope. Not that "coffee" would be anything tastable by a Corvikan. Did they have its equivalent, Helva wondered?

Had Niall really overcome that brawn fixation? More corrosive to her peace of mind, if ruthlessly suppressed, was her own disquieting wish to see that Asuran solido. Shell people were conditioned not to think about physical appearance. They were told that their bodies were physically stunted to fit in the shells. They knew that they were necessarily immersed in nutrient fluids, that there were masses of wires connecting the various sections of their brains to the sensors that allowed them to operate their particular vehicle or mechanisms. It was tacitly understood that a shell person was a grotesque in a civilization that could ensure physical perfection and pleasing looks.

Only now had it become important to Helva to know that, but for the birth defect that had destined her to be a shell person, she would have been beautiful. She wanted to be, she could have been, but she wasn't. And it was possible that Niall, deprived of all feminine companionship on long trips, might succumb to the temptation to open her shell. Illegally he had obtained the release words, a sequence and pitch unique and supposedly known only to one person, which would open the panel and give access to her titanium shell beyond. As Rocco had said, a brawn fixation was dangerous.

The unbidden thought of Niall sporting with the three nubile girls in the galley exacerbated her mind. Had he suggested to Permut and Abu that they keep her occupied while he was... ?

You... are a jealous bitch! Helva told herself in measured tones of surprise and selfrepugnance. A shell person jealous of a mobile? For a sexual reason? Ridiculous and yet, she'd all the symptoms of sheer flaming jealousy.

She'd loved Jennan, but there'd been no trace of that utterly human vice in their relationship.

Well, Helva thought sternly, you didn't have to worry about sharing Jennan with half the female population of the Galaxy. And you didn't love him this way: you loved Jennan with a purity equal to Juliet's, with not a care as to thingsastheyare. You'd've changed your tune if Jennan had lived.

Or would I?

Jennan, at least, had been discreet. Unlike the stud she'd aboard her now.

Had Niall passed the danger point of his fixation? Or, when his libido reached the unendurable in space, would the temptation to open her panel return?

How much did Niall count on the Corvikis approving the drive? How long would he stay her brawn if they didn't?

It was scant consolation to realize that the cyclevariant drive wasn't the only one undergoing a test run.

By the time the immense crane had swung her back on her tail fins, Helva was evaluating her new suit of superfine superskin.

"You gleam, baby, you glisten, you shine in the sun like a jewel," Niall said into his combutton. In the company of Breslaw and Railly and several of the ceramicists, he was standing at a distance from her on the apron of the kiln building. "By god, you're blue in some lights. Is that stuff iridescent, Breslaw?"

Helva increased the magnification of her scanner on the group. Breslaw was beaming fatuously, for the process was a new application of old techniques and the coating had been accomplished with relatively no halts or snags. Certainly the finished product was impressive.

"How d'you feel, Helva," Niall asked.

"How's one supposed to feel after a facelifting?"

"Bruised. Stop being so eternally female, woman. Are all your systems go? We don't need a clogged pore where we're going."

Helva'd been doing a rapid check of her exterior installations. Everything was in operating order, but she felt differently. Not uncomfortable, merely altered.

"So," Railly was saying to Niall in a steely, teethclenched voice, "now how soon can you lift?"

"Why, Chief, we'd've been away two days ago if I could've got any decent cooperation from servicing personnel." Blithely unaware of Railly's popeyed reaction, Niall turned to the startled ceramicists. "Do we need to wait until her skin cools?"

The senior technician stammered out something about temperature variations and tolerances, and then shrugged assent.

"Great. Goodbye all. See you sometime yesterday!"

With art insolent salute, Niall strode across the permatarm toward Helva. She let down the lift for a quick getaway, keeping one eye on Railly, who was apoplectic at the calculated insolence. Breslaw began speaking to his superior, though Helva couldn't tell if he were pacifying Railly or diverting him with other matters. The ceramicists had certainly departed quickly.

No sooner was Niall within than he brusquely signaled her to secure for liftoff. She started to get clearance from the Control Tower before she remembered a minor detail.

"We've no supervisor."

"Oh yes, we have. Railly!" The name came out as a growled curse. Niall bounced into the pilot's seat, strapped down. "Let's get off this fardling base. Now!"

She began liftoff, sluggish because of the extra weight in drive chamber, strut, and skin.