"It's not safe for us. The energy levels are too hot... Integrity will be violated and-"

The outer edge of his shell touched hers. Sane thought, Corvikan or human, was impossible. Explosively they began to excite one another, each level in her seeking its equal in him, slowing, speeding, delicately adjusting, seeking the merger that would be the imposition of one pattern over the other, all levels matched, all energies mutual, all...

Other thermal groups were attracted by the emissions, attracted and held, transferring power so that Helva felt her Corvikan envelope engorge to incredible dimensions, giving her unlimited mass to energize at an even higher excitation level. Faster the particular forces spun, faster, to match speeds, to combine, neutronic shifts of dazzling force...

Fission... an incredible stoking of the available energy... the atmosphere splitting with thunder as immeasurable positive forces began to recombine...

Distance was where she was, some black, sensedeprived consciousness, some tiny flicker of ego, lost, lost, lost. Unwilling to resume. A slow return to awareness. Exhaustion, deathdeep in an overstressed mind. A shuddering violent release to fall with an endless spinning grace into unawareness, comforting and kind.

Offensive odor, acrid, strong, staining the lungs, reviving the senses that must escape that burden.

To be aware and wish for deprivation! How strange!

Reality came into focus. And, sadly, identity.

Niall's body was sprawled by the console, the helmet upturned on the deck, his grasping hand a scant inch from it. His shipsuit was dark and damp with stain. Though he seemed motionless, she never questioned that he lived. She knew that, knew it as deeply as she knew her own vitality, low as it was.

It was comforting to look at him: the fatiguelined face unguarded and boyyoung, the dark hair tousled, the wiry body limp. Soon he would rouse and then that dear form would change, would vary and not be wholly hers.

No... Helva hesitated. No, an intangible difference impinged on her growing awareness. She was not wholly herself. There was a subtle alteration.

Curious, she began to explore her ship self. The critical difference was not in her systems or hull. She had full command of every area.

The steady vibration of power in her idling drive, however, resonated at a new frequency.

A long groan was wrenched from her, reverberating in the cabin and down the quiet corridors, humming through the deck plates to rouse Niall.

The cv drive was functioning. Beta Corvi! Helva's mind reeled, fighting to deny/accept the experience that surged back over her in a tsunami of emotions, abrading stunned sensibilities.

Niall crawled on his hands and knees, staggered to his feet, swaying as he took the two steps to the pilot's chair.

But they were here. They had been...

She hadn't the energy to transfer back. She hadn't the strength to tell Niall, who wouldn't have been strong enough to pick up the dislodged helmet anyway.

Instinct marshaled a response. She must break this disaster orbit, flee from Beta Corvi. Strange the Corvikans were silent. Humans must interdict that system to prevent the unwary from ever encountering those devastating sentients. Some progress was too costly in terms of human emotions. Who'd suggested that? She'd remember later. Right now, instinct and conditioning prevailed. She had to escape. She began to compute a flight pattern, and stopped. The ship was not in orbit around an invidious planet. They were drifting in space, far from the light of Beta Corvi.

Startled, Helva examined and identified star magnitudes, was relieved to find familiar ones about her, comfortable lightyears from Beta Corvi. Safe!

She'd already escaped. How? She couldn't remember. She scanned the recording banks and realized that three days. Galactic standard, had elapsed since they had initiated that fantastic transfer to Corviki III. And, judging by the distance they'd come, she must have used the cv drive. What had the Corvikans said about an inhibitor? Had they left a trail of cuy particles? Punitive action?

Niall was stirring, groggily seeking his face with hands that trembled. He leaned forward, elbows jabbing with awkward force into his knees as he held an aching head. His wiry body shook with an uncontrollable paroxysm and an oily sweat exuded from his pores.

"Drink something, Niall. It's partly lack of food," she heard herself say in a voice she scarcely recognized. "It's three days since we made that transfer."

As he lurched to his feet and stumbled to the galley, she checked her nutrients and adjusted the acid balance hastily. Niall clutched at the counter for support and fumbled for a restorative spray, gave himself a massive dose. He pulled open the first container he could reach, gulping its contents before they'd heated. He knocked down several more cans in an attempt to close his fingers around one. He finally opened a container of soup, drank it, and the shaking subsided. Still holding the restorative spray, he half staggered to his cabin, into the shower. He fumbled to turn the water on, alternating hot and cold sprays, unconcerned that he was still dressed. The treatment and liquid began to revive him and he stripped, carefully washing away the accumulated filth of three lost days.

Freshly dressed, he returned to the galley and found coffee. As the container was warming, he carried it into the lounge, dropping to the couch that faced Helva.

"Did you check yourself?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes. Acid!."

"Not surprising. What was that about an inhibitor?

How did we get away from Beta Corvi? No, don't explain how. I know. Fardles! Did we leave a trail of those cuy particles?"

"I'm not certain I'd know a cuy particle if I met it," Helva replied drily. "But they've done something to the shielding about the drive. To the alloy itself. It's denser and light. And I feel light, if that makes sense."

"Nothing they do makes sense or no sense." Niall gave a rueful snort.

"We did use that drive. D'you realize how far we went in three days?"

"Not far enough." Niall spaced the words out. "And let us not speed home, cv drive operative or not. I'm in no shape to face debriefing. In fact, I'm going to avoid it if at all possible." But his grin was Niallnormal as he raised the hot coffee in a toast.

"That is good!" Helva said with mild surprise at the taste.

Niall blinked. "What did you say?" He leaned forward. "You tasted that?"

Inexplicably, she had savored the coffee taste in his mouth.

"Yes, that coffee tastes good," she said again after a very long thoughtful silence.

"Well!" Niall scratched his nose. "How d'you like them apples?"

"You haven't tasted me apples yet."

Niall took a deep breath that he exhaled in a long chuckle, all the while regarding the tendril of steam writhing up from the coffee container.

"Helva, we didn't complete the recombination?"

"I think," Helva spoke slowly, trying her thought out loud, "that the time limit flipped us back right at the critical moment." She felt reluctant to examine her reaction to that interference. She knew with that part of her which was Niall, just as he knew with his fractions of her how perilously close they'd come.

"I wonder-would we have withdrawn at all from Beta Corvi had the fusion been complete?" Niall laughed softly, his eyes brimming with amusement. "Hey gal, into which one of us would we both go? Hell, you're pintsized and so am I, but who'd've been us? Or would we have been stuck in the shell? Say,.301 what was going on down there with that character who kept pushing you? And pulling me? Oh, that was them? Fardles, did we damned near get stuck with that Colmer bitch?" His dismay dissolved in a weak laugh of relief, and then he sat, a long time, while the coffee cooled, just staring contentedly at her panel. She knew that he, too, was mentally probing to estimate the extent of their meshing.

"I suspect it will take all our lifetimes to figure it out."

"Quite likely."

The prospect daunted neither.

"Hell, we can't wander off like this," Niall said after a long, long period of mutual introspection. He shoved himself out of the couch, lobbed the old coffee into the disposal chute, and went for another.

"So they altered the shielding?" he asked, leaning against the counter. "Is there a separate inhibitor? Or is that the alternation in the shielding? And did you grasp what the crot are cuy particles? Breslaw is going to want to know something more specific than that they're dangerous."

"He suspects that..."

"And inconvenient if the Corviki catch us making/ exhaling them?"

"I think their warning should be deterrent enough. There is a black core within the driveisotope that didn't previously exist. There is more of that same black stuff in a specially shielded container in the supply bay. It's radiating a purple shade."

"Hey, Helva, did you actually sort out the personalities of Kuria, Prane, and Chaddress. What'n'ell do we tell Dobrinon?"

"As little as possible. No, they were there. At least I was aware of a KurlaPrane core, but only because it was a strong combination."

She saw Niall wince with a regret that she shared.

"We don't, do we, tell him about that in us?"

"Never! I shouldn't like to have to explain something that is so personally subjective."

"Like tasting coffee?"

"Among other things. Dobrinon would take us apart to find out which facets of you got into me in the reassembly."

"Gal, we are together!" He enunciated each syllable with a jab of his finger. "But no one, not any one, gets any chance to dissect our feelings. Right?"

"Right!"

Then his face dissolved into a smile, part malice, part pure selfdelight, part utter triumph.

"Yeah, gal, have we got a thing going together!" He shook his head and slapped his thigh. "Hell, yes! By anything that's been left holy, Helva, there's nothing we can't do now. C'mon, gal, pour on that power. Cycle that crotty drive to get us back to Regulus yesterday. Scatter us cuy particles where we may. We're going to buy the body corporate forever free of dear Railly."

If stars had ears, they'd have heard the vast halelujahs ringing from the partnered ship.

The End