"It's heavy going, Niall," she warned him and then piled on thrust.

Once clear of Regulus's service satellites, Niall spun himself away from the console.

"One more moment down there listening to Railly and I'd've done my nut!" He heaved himself out of the pilot chair and floated across the lounge, his expression bleak and weary.

As she felt rather elated to be finally away, she was momentarily dumbfounded by the transformation in her private whirlwind. She was even more surprised when he bypassed the galley and handpulled himself into his cabin.

"Wake me, girl, if anything startling occurs."

He kicked off his boots, stripped off the shipsuit, rolled under the cover, pulling the freefall strap across him, and was asleep before his arm dropped slowly back.

And so he slept and slept and slept. Which was no consolation to Helva.

She occupied herself at first by spacetesting all her functions, did a bit of jockeying on thrusters to get the feel of how the modifications in her hull affected her maneuverability. She felt like a scow, and wondered if the now inert mass of the cv drive would lighten once it was operative.

Asleep, Niall Parollan did not resemble his waking self; there was a curious vulnerability about his mouth, the sweep of rather long eyelashes on wide cheekbones. He looked altogether too young to be his chronological age and rather defenseless. He did not twitch, toss, or snore, moving less than usual in what she understood were normal sleep patterns. Economical that. She watched him for quite a long time, as if memorizing the very pores of his rather coarse skin, the way his hair pattern took an abrupt turn at the back of his head.

She firmly closed off that scanner and searched about her for sleeptime occupation. She dialed for Abu's dance tapes and viewed the first five minutes of one before it occurred to her that the dance forms were highly erotic and far too suggestive for her present state of mind. She nipped over to Permut's latest showing and, although she tried to be completely objective, discovered phallic symbols of one flagrant sort or another were the themes of all the art forms he was currently exhibiting. Exhibition indeed!

Rather appalled at the prominence of sexual motifs, she sought refuge in the good Solar Prane's nighttime occupation, but she had scarcely got into Julius Caesar, a play that ought to have been safe, when the tone of jealousy began to make itself obvious. King Lear was not much better, nor Coriolanus. She switched to comedy and got a good way into The Comedy of Errors before the stupidity of the lovers became too ironic. The Tempest was no good: she felt akin to poor Caliban and that did her morale no good.

She decided that the only safe subject was the specs of the cv drive, and tried to imagine that she were a Corviki examining the data and how it/she/they/he would react. The exercise was not felicitous because she began to think the cv drive wouldn't work: it was an appallingly wasteful use of energy because the thrust had to be directed away from the goal to protect frail human bodies. Her conclusion depressed her so she turned back to Abu's tapes. There must be some dances that did not depict loveerotic or lovedenied or...

Yes, the fifth tape was of a formal insect dance from the Lyrae IV system: color, motion, almost mesmerizing, very soothing certainly to Helva's distressed sen sibilities. Gratefully, she gave herself up to the play of form and color. Halfway through the tape and much calmer, she wondered idly if it were Niall's sex drive she'd have to worry about.

Sixteen hours later Niall Parollan awoke, stretched, catapulted out of the bunk in one movement, and sang merrily away in the shower.

"What's our running time to Beta Corvi?" he asked as he was dressing. "And let's put on a bit of grav, love."

"Fourteen standard days, twelve hours, and nine minutes. How much grav, threequarters?" She began to apply gravity as he settled himself in the galley.

"That's it exactly," he said, holding up his hand, and making a cutoff gesture. He bounced a little as he made for the coffee cupboard. With a warming container in one hand, he prepared a staggering protein meal.

"What? No shish kebabs?"

"That junk's for show." He took a long swig of the now hot coffee. "Ah, that's the stuff. Gotta keep up the image." He snorted as if repudiating that same image. "I think what recommends you most to me, dear girl, is that I don't have to be anyone but Niall Parollan within your stately walls." He stretched again until his shoulder bones cracked. "God, I'm still tired, riding those ship monkeys to get us out of there. Say, how's your nutrient balance?"

"Just great."

"What'd you do to amuse yourself last night?"

"Actually, I settled on some tapes Abu sent on board... formal insect dances from Lyrae."

Niall stared at her. "Great jumping puddles of fardle! Couldn't you find anything more exciting?"

"Quite likely," and Helva giggled without explanation. "But you know, the dances were very soothing."

"Do you always do something like that?" The notion evidently distressed Niall, as if she'd suddenly sprouted facial hair.

"Oh no. If I'm near enough, I can chat up another ship."

He chuckled. "Yeah, you BB ships are diwils for knowing gossip before groundstaff."

They talked amiably about other inconsequentialities while he consumed his enormous meal. He stretched out on the couch, then patted the bulge of stomach.

"Do you eat like that often?"

"Fardles, no. I'd be fat. That'll last me a long while." He yawned. "Did you get any new music on board? Abu was talking about some new reels..."

He was asleep within half an hour. At first concerned, Helva came to the decision that one of the reasons Niall Parollan seemed indefatigable around people was because he could conserve energy at other times. He woke up refreshed several hours later, ate lightly, did isometrics "to get rid of some breakfast," and then settled down to browsing through the technical journals he'd had her collect from Regulus Central Information. They discussed the article on polymer extrusions from alien silicates, he studied the cv drive specs yet another time, relaxed over a coffee while the two worked a crossword puzzle in Deltan symbology, and then he bade her a fond goodnight and went to bed again.

That set the pattern for their trip as far as activity was concerned, exactly in accord with what could be expected from any trained brawn. Two evenings from Beta Corvi, it dawned on Helva that she had allowed herself to be influenced too much by people who did not know Niall Parollan at all... who knew of him and about his reputation. She, Helva the 834, knew another side of the man "himself," without image or affectation, and that personality was very likable, too likable. She sighed as she watched, for the twelfth time, the Lyraen dances and let herself be soothed. She could carry her true love through the stars and never touch him. But she could be more to Parollan than any other female in the entire galaxy, and woe unto her who tried to part them now!

Beta Corvi pulsed a vivid orangered on the viewscreen as Helva picked up the first Corviki space buoy on her scanners. Instantly it colored, a microsun in the carpet of blackness.

She roused'Niall, who was sleeping in eaglespread abandon. Simultaneously the psychetransfer circuit in her mind was activated and she felt the query of the alien mind.

In the time it took Niall to rise from his bunk, the Corviki had established the identity of their visitors, the reason for their return, the alterations in her hull and the inactive core of the new drive, and issued her orbital instructions.

"Hey," Niall protested as a surge of power, uninitiated by Helva, sent him lurching into the door frame.

"Sorry, pal, they just took over."

"Took over?" Niall padded into the main cabin, rubbing his right arm. "I thought you'd wake me when we reached their first buoy."

"I did." She turned on the rear screen, focused on the fastreceding marker. "The Corviki don't waste time, which they consider another form of energy."

"Hmmm. An interesting concept."

"We're approaching orbit," she told him.

He blinked in astonishment. "One thing sure: those modifications of yours can sure take speed."

"A point."

"Hey, will they give me time to eat? A cup of coffee, at least?" He gestured at his nakedness. "The head? Clothes?"

"We should have a few moments to spare," Helva said with a laugh. His expression was smallboyembarrassed.

"Ever the courteous hosts."

He had managed to get himself assembled by the time the glowing luminosity that was Beta Corvi's third planet filled the viewscreen. Somewhere down in that moiling envelope of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were the Corviki. Or were Solar Prane and Kuria Ster, Chaddress or a vengeful Ansra Colmer rising in those spectacular flares to greet the visitors? If anything remained of those personalities. Helva preferred to share Dobrinon's optimistic view that those immigrants retained something of their former personalities.

Helva felt the change in the ship before it registered on the console before Niall.

"We're in orbit? We can transfer?"

The eagerness in his voice produced a perverse reluctance in Helva. Niall couldn't know, despite all she and Davo and the others had told him, how devastating that experience could be, how insidious. Now a new fear threatened her: what could that experience do to the fragile bond they'd been contriving?

"Yes, we can transfer," she said, trying to keep the growing apprehension out of her voice. And she'd thought, Dobrinon had assured her, that she'd made a good adjustment to this return. She'd fooled only herself.

Niall swung the chair round, helmet halfraised to his head.

"Is it still that bad, Helva? I can go alone if it's that hard."

"This we have to do together." "That's the operative phrase, m'girl, together." "Let's go-together."

"That's my Helva." The helmet masked his eyes but not the eager confident smile.

Helva fought/released herself to the experience, knowing an instant of fleeting terror at being outside her safe shell. But as the transfer occurred, she reminded herself that she bad survived a worse terror of complete sense deprivation on Borealis, survived it only because of the Corviki episode. And Niall was with her this time! The pressure enveloped her in a deceptive comfort. She shuddered and the streamers floated up from beneath her.

"Niall!" she exuded, anxious lest in that instant she might have transferred at a distance from him.

"I'm a bloody sea monster." Niall's reassuring dominance was just beyond the large frond. "There you are!" And he emerged, a creature like herself, already coloring the shell with his own personal intensity. A creature like herself!

"Helva! You're..." And they spun toward each other.

"Do not express energy in such a sequence!" A new dominance, dark, dense, powerful, overwhelmed them with its authority. "You have imperfect control of your shells."

By a force more potent than their pentup frustrations, they were held apart. The energies which they yearned intensely to combine were dampened by the dominance.

Deliberately, Helva now sought to bury her alltoohuman reactions into the Corviki ethos. "Conserve energy. Reduce spin. Lock suborbital speeds."

Niall's shell pulsed and shook with his effort to control his emotions in an alien context and because of the totally unfamiliar, for him, subjection to a supraauthority.

"The emanations are unusually rich," the Corviki emitted, withdrawing some of the repressive authority. "No similar wastage has been observed despite the variety now available for analysis." There was approval in the comment, but also a reinforcement of the initial warning.

With dark and awful despair, Helva forced her attention to the dominance, anything to distract herself from Niall's proximity. In doing so, she recognized a familiar aura in the dominance.

"Manager?"

"Of the same thermal core. There have been recombinations within the mutual group," and the entity turned such a lavenderpurple of Corvikian pleasure that Helva interpreted "smugness" in his tone.

Taking cowardly refuge in the mission, Helva immediately explained the purpose of their unsolicited return. As she got to the point, she recognized approval in the Manager's density.

"From such an extrapolation of the data for use in the parameters of your race's limitations, undesirable factors might indeed result from exposing irreconcilables to stability forms," the Manager commented, rippling with muddy blues. "The multiple interaction shows commendable concern for the proper conservation of mass energies. The hypothesis is being examined. Improper equations cause ineffectual results and perverse conclusions. Matter must be expended only in constructive quantities."

Simultaneously a host of other dominances was felt, compounding the authority about her and Niall. The newcomers were, to Helva's mind, dense with experiential energies, held in lease by immense controls.

Helva had not encountered similar energy groupings in the first Beta Corvi mission, and began to emit tiny distressful losses which she was unable to contain.

"Why are you so afraid, Helva?" Niall asked. She came close to resenting his selfcontrol.

"These entities are so gross with power," she said. "But fear is not a component in my energy loss. On Corvi, we have nothing to fear..."

"But ourselves," Niall finished for her, his trailing tendrils floating gently beneath him.

She kept hers tightly entwined lest they stray without her volition... and touch him.

"Do not waste energy so," she was advised by one of the new power group. But the directive held no censure and Helva let the suborbitals begin to spin gently so that her tendrils drifted easily, if inevitably toward Niall's. The Corviki would protect her from herself.

She was distracted by a series of condensations and dissipations, expansions and contractions, darting, it sometimes seemed, through both her shell and Niall's, as their interrogators fused momentarily or attenuated in the discussion of the problem presented by the visitors. Apparently such a use of stabilized isotopes had never occurred to the Corviki. Helva thought that amusement dominated their discreet emissions. Dense as these ancient entities were, they had never considered the possibility of such a direction for familiar energies.

One entity reasoned that, of all the handicaps through which life forms must evolve, the adolescent vigor of this particular species was, at least, divertingly resourceful.

Helva and Niall drifted in this limbo, amused by an occasional storm of colorful discussion.

Suddenly the aura changed. With paternal forbearance, the Corviki approved the cv drive. However, there were modifications which would reduce the cuy particles imprudently released by such a clumsy process. An inhibiting feedback was required. Otherwise, although the envelope was unbelievably awkward and totally unnecessary, dictated as it was by the exigencies of protecting frail protein matter, they could deduce no annihilative perversion of the applied data.

They did stipulate that any further application must be accompanied by a similar inhibitor. They would know, by virtue of cuy particles in the galaxy, if that restriction had been ignored. Punitive action would instantly result.

As abruptly as the dominances had assembled, they dispersed, leaving Helva, Niall, and the Manager in a welter of loose fronds and burping ochre eruptions. Distant novae of emissions drifted back like the light laughter of the godly, seen and felt, rather than heard.

"Has the drive really been approved?" asked Niall, bewilderment apparent in the action of his tendrils.

"The emissions were favorable," Helva and the Manager agreed in chorus.

"Who are you now? Helva?" he demanded, swinging from one to the other, confusion making his tendrils rigid.

"I am Helva, here," she said, fighting with the desire to remain Helva for his sake and the need to remain Corvikan enough to control precarious excitations.

"Let's find out about the others and leave."

"I have," Helva said.

"Did you not feel that thermal group near you?" asked the Manager of Niall, shading to ochre neutrality.

"He had not previously encountered their dominances, Manager."

The Manager assumed more color and then, bleeding a little blue, he disappeared.

"You.did have a chance to speak to Prane and-"

"I encountered them in one of the thermal groups. I'll tell you later when we're back on the ship."

"Then the mission's completed?" The triumph in Niall's tone colored his shell a brilliant orangered and he pressed toward her eagerly.

From behind a frond, first one, then another Corvikan appeared, but Helva was diverted from their arrival by Niall's rapidly changing color.

"We cannot combine!" she cried, and tried to keep her distance from him.

One of the Corviki brushed against her, pushing her back toward Niall.

"Don't play the professional virgin with me now, Helva!" His furiously human response was emphasized by the fiery glow of his shell as every particle became excited. The Corviki who had pushed her was now throwing power toward Niall, exciting him further. It flashed through Helva's awareness on two levels that the Corviki was familiar to her. She'd no time to identify it; she had to avoid Niall.

"You don't understand! Don't, Nialll We've got to get back to the ship!"

"Helva!"