Right here. I'll leave you two men alone.

Refusing to placate her ruffled feelings, Jeff caressed her with a very affectionate thought before he felt Afra's mind touch his.

Are you sure you're only T3? he asked, a little surprised at the firmness in the Capellan's touch.

I'm in gestalt, after all, Afra replied, goodnaturedly. And, in the course of twentyodd years in the presence of the fine Raven touch, even a lowly T3 learns a few tricks. From the expression on the Rowan's face, I'd hazard that Damia is being discussed. What's she up to now?

Damia had just returned to Auriga when she heard the Rowan giving the Tower official warning of the transmission of a personal capsule.

Afra? Damia exclaimed, reaching back along her mother's touch to Callisto.

Damia! Afra said wamingly but too late.

Without waiting for the Rowan to flip the capsule halfway to Auriga, Damia blithely drew the carrier directly from Callisto, ignoring her mother's stunned and angry reaction to such an abuse of protocol.

She regretted her impulsive action almost immediately. But Afra's capsule was opening and he was swinging himself over the edge. She could not have missed his trenchant disapproval if she'd been a mere T15. He stood up, looking down at her, the same aloof, contained man. Now why, Damia wondered irritably, had she expected Afra to change? Had she? And would Afra condescend to comment on those changes in her?

She rose from her own capsule, instinctively standing very erect as if to minimize the differences in their heights. Tall as she was, inches taller than her mother, she came only to Afra's shoulder.

"You will apologize to your mother, Damia," Afra said, his unexpected tenor speaking voice a curious echo of his quiet mental tone. "Isthia taught you better manners even if we never could."

"You've been trying to lately, though, haven't you?" The retort came out before she could stop it. Would Afra always have this effect on her?

He cocked his head to one side and regarded her steadily. She sent a swift probe which he parried easily.

"You were distressing Jenna unnecessarily, Damia. She appealed to me as the nearest male of her Clan, and because she did not wish Jeff to know of your indiscretion."

"She chose well." Damia was so appalled at the waspishness of her tone that she extended her hand toward him apologetically.

She could feel him throw up his mental barriers and, for a second, she wondered if he might refuse what was, after all, the height of familiarity between telepaths. But his'hand rose smoothly to clasp hers, lightly, warmly, leaving her with the essential cool greencomfortablesecurity that was the physical/mental doubletouch of him.

Then, with a onesided smile, he bowed to indicate he was flattered but allowed a recollection of her as a nude baby on a bath towel to cross his public mind.

She made a face at him, and substituted Larak's son. Afra blandly put "her" back on the towel beside her nephew.

"All right," she laughed, "I'll behave."

"About time," he said with an affable grin, and looked beyond her to their surroundings.

He had seen Auriga in others' mindeyes but the amber sunlight was easier on his eyes than Earth's bright yellow, so that Auriga was not a dark world to him, but a restful one. The sweetscented breeze sweeping down from the high snowy mountain range was lightly moist and the atmosphere had a high oxygen content, exhilarating him.

"It's a lovely world you have here, Damia."

She smiled up at him, her blue eyes brilliant under the fringes of long black lashes.

"It's a lovely young vigorous world. Come see where I live," and she led the way from the landing stage to her dwelling.

The house perched on the high plateau above the noisy metropolis that was Auriga's major city, and Damia's Sector Headquarters. Its randomly sprawling newness had a vitality which the planned order of Earth lacked. Afra found the sight stimulating.

"It is, isn't it?" Damia agreed, following his surface thought. Then she directed his mind to her day's discovery, giving tha experience exactly as it had happened to her. "And the touch is unlike anything I've ever met."

"You certainly didn't expect it to be familiar, did you?" Afra asked in dry amusement.

"Just because they come from another galaxy doesn't mean they can't be humanoid," she replied.

Afra snorted in disgust and went into her main living room.

"I'll fix your favorite protein," she volunteered in one of her mercurial shifts.

"Oh, don't go to any trouble for me."

"No trouble at all." Mischievously, she allowed him to see her reaching for supplies from his home world lightyears away.

"Always the thoughtful hostess," he said, graciously inclining his head. "Have you estimated the alien's arrival?"

"I'll know better when I've had a chance to judge their relative speed," she said. "A day or two would give me some idea."

He watched her at the homey duties. Like most Tls, she enjoyed manual work and performed the daily housekeeping herself, without relying on mechanical services most households considered necessities. In a few minutes she set before him a perfectly cooked attractively served meal which he greeted perfunctorily.

"Can't I ever impress you?" she asked, half wistful, half sharp.

"Why should you want to?" he asked, affecting mild surprise. "I knew you from your first incoherent thought."

"Familiarity breeds contempt, huh?"

"Contempt, no. Understanding, yes. Particularly at our levels. And, of course, confusion, wherever you are," Afra replied. "Very good, just the way I like it," he added appreciatively, indicating his dinner.

Damia made a face at him across the table, and with a deliberate disregard for Tmanners, reached a portion of the saucesteeped meat into her mouth without spilling a drop. When Afra continued to ignore her, she sighed and picked up her fork.

"Shall I take over the regular workload, Damia, and leave you free for surveillance?"

"We don't have a heavy traffic right now. It's between harvests in this system, and manufacturing is slow for the next few months. The usual amount of tourists, though."

"How have you covered your absences with the staff?"

"Just told them I've been resting. I'll account for your presence as a preliminary survey for FT & T. Right? As if any 'of those lamebrains could 'search' me," she concluded contemptuously. 34 "So true," Afra replied, indicating in his public mind his professional respect for her.

She was not deaf to the irony and was about to reply hotly, but went back to eating rather than give him further satisfaction.

It was unprecedented, this contact with sentient life from what was probably another galaxy, yet for all her capriciousness, Damia had not permitted a hint of panic or her own inner excitement to escape. In that she heeded one of the basic tenets of her position. Panic enough was fomented within the complex Federated Worlds in the normal course of power struggles, revolutions, ecological problems, and pioneer exigencies. By common consent, instantaneous communications between planets no longer meant instant hysteria of worlds unconcerned with the emergency. Federated World Government handled the reports of all local disputes which were, by law, reported to them by FT & T Primes. Interstellar political or natural disasters were not added to the emotional burdens already suffered by populations. Primes exercised the option to disperse or retain reports which might affect minorities within their jurisdiction, but digests of all communications were, by law, available on request.

Damia propped her chin in her hands and looked earnestly at Afra across the table. She sighed heavily.

"You were right to call me to task for 'tasting' Larak and Jenna. But I did want to know what it would be like to be in love and then bring forth a baby."

"And... ?"

"Apart from the pain, I guess it's rewarding enough."

"You don't sound too sure."

Damia cocked her head and traced an involved pattern on the table with her index finger.

"It must be different to do it yourself, no matter how deeply you scan."

A trace thought behind her shield, called forth by her remark, sent through Afra a bolt of terror which he barely managed to contain. She was unconsciously censoring, and it had to do with the alien aura and with her own desire for the experience of motherhood. But trace thought it was, and he had only that onemillisecond impression, tantalizing, terrorizing.

"Why, Afra, why?" Damia continued, unaware of the reaction she had produced in him, her own mind absorbed in selfpity. She launched herself physically from the table in one lightning move, and stood at the window wall, her back as expressive of her frustration and bitterness as her mind. "Why am I a loner? The Rowan found Jeff, but where, when will I find someone?"

"Damia, you've met every psionic prospect Talent above Class 7 in the NineStar League."

"Them," she dismissed those candidates scornfully.

"Young Nicos, the T5 working with Jeran on Deneb, was mighty taken with you. Calm down a bit-"

"Nicos!" Damia's eyes flashed blue fire. "That postadolescent mess! Why, it'd be five or six years before he's even presentable."

Afra was no stranger to such dismissals. He'd heard many since the time Damia had begun to be interested in the opposite sex as a precocious adolescent. There had been times when he wished he had followed his own deephidden desire. But he had given a great deal of thought to the variables, and knew that he could only wait. He knew how hard it must be for Damia to watch others pairing off, achieving the enviable total accord that telepaths enjoyed, and for which she was so eager. Her very brilliance and beauty caused many otherwise willing mates to shy away. Usually, she would talk herself out of her mood, but tonight there was a new undercurrent that was dangerous in its intensity.

"Is that why you so eagerly await the arrival of the aliens?" Afra said in a soft drawl, deliberately leaching all emotion out of his words. "On the off chance they're biologically compatible? Do you envision your soul mate winging across the void to you?"

She whirled to face him, her eyes wide with rage.

"Don't you taunt me, Afra," she said in a hoarse whisper.

He inclined his head in apology.

"Better get some sleep, Damia," he said gently, and gave her a little mental push toward her bedroom.

"You're right. I am tired, Afra, and excited, and silly. It's just... just that sometimes I feel like nothing more than a useful mental stevedore: not a person at all. Then this happens... and I... I have the fantastic chance to establish communication with alien minds..."

Again Afra caught the unmistakable and unconscious suppression of a thought within the maelstrom of her weariness.

Damia turned on her heel and left the room. Afra watched the sunset turn the plateau a deep tangerine, then diminish in the east. Brooding over the evening's conversation, he waited until the roiling activity of Damia's mind subsided into the even beat of sleep. Then he, too, went to bed. Carefully, just as he was on the edge of sleep, he reinforced his mental screens so that none of his longing for her would escape. He wondered, in that honest interval between consciousness and dreaming, if he would have enough strength left to cope with a third generation of Raven women.

The next day they initiated the new routine. Damia handled the longdistance items first. Then after the incoming workload had been sorted out and there were no more demands on her talent, she departed into space, to "rest," leaving Afra to deal with the remaining tasks.

Although the function of a Prime was complex, a twominute mental briefing by Damia supplied Afra with the background of immediate problems and all the procedures peculiar to that station. The memory bank would give any additional information. When the focal talents of the gestalt were exchanged, not even onehalf a beat of the pulse of the Aurigean Sector Headquarters was missed. The allocation of duties pleased Afra because it. would give him the opportunity to use the gestalt of the Station to reach Jeff without Damia knowing. She would be too busy "reaching" for the alien touch to be aware of Afra. The temporary breach of her trust in him was offset by the absolving knowledge of its necessity.

In terms of intergalactic distances, the aliens approached at a snail's pace: by interstellar references, faster than the speed of light. A week passed and then one evening Damia returned from her daily "rest" bursting with news. She moved from the landing area right into the living room, where Afra was lounging.

"I made individual contact," she cried. "And what a mind!" She was so excited that she didn't notice the flare of jealousy which Afra couldn't suppress. "And what a surprise he got," she went on.

From the moment she had entered, Afra had known that the mind was male.

"A Prime talent?" he asked, counterfeiting a show of genuine interest.

"I can't assess it. He's so... different," she exclaimed, her eyes shining and her mental aura dazzling with her success. "He fades and then returns. The distance is immense, and there isn't much definition in the thoughts. I can only reach the surface." Damia threw herself onto the long couch. "I'm exhausted. I shall have to sleep before I can reach Jeff with the news. I don't dare use the station."

Afra agreed readily, waiting until she relaxed into sleep. Ethics aside, he tried to reach this experience in her mind below the emotional level, only to find himself overwhelmed by the subjective. Damia was treating herself to a high emotional kick! Afra was afraid for her, with a fear deeper than any he had ever touched personally or vicariously. Afra withdrew troubled. She had better calm down and start acting like a Prime when she woke, instead of a giddy girl. If she didn't, he'd push the panic button himself.

After several hours' sleep, Damia's mental pyrotechnics were calmer. She "reached" Jeff with a professional report of the contact, only just a trifle high. When she had finished broadcasting, Jeff got a private thought to Afra but Afra could only confirm Damia's report. He did not yet comment on his vague forebodings.

The next day, Damia tossed off her necessary work as fast as she could, then went into space. And Afra waited as he had been waiting for Damia for years. She returned so shining from the second encounter, Afra had to clamp an icy hold over his mind.

The third morning, as Damia sat in the control tower, she worked' with such haste Afra reprimanded her. She corrected herself, gaily, making far too light of her mistake, and then, eagerly, she propelled herself out toward the rendezvous. When she returned that evening so tired that she reeled into the living room, Afra took command.

"I'm going with you tomorrow, Damia," he said firmly.

"What for?" She sat bolt upright to glare at him.

"You forget that I have a direct order from Earth Prime to check the aura of these aliens. You've no way of knowing this isn't a reinvasion by the same entities that attacked Deneb twenty years ago."

"Sodan said they'd had no previous contact with any sentients," she said, half angry.

"Sodan?"

"That is how he identifies himself," she said with smug complacency. She lay back on the couch, smiling up at Afra.

It disturbed him to know that this entity had a name. It made the alien seem too human. Nor could Afra quite reason away the tenderness with which Damia spoke that name.

"Good enough," Afra said, with an indifference he didn't feel. "However, you don't need to introduce me formally. All I need is to check on the aura. I'll know in an instant if there's any familiarity. I won't jeopardize his confidence in your touch. He'll never know I've been there." Afra yawned.

"Why are you tired?"

"I've been stevedoring all day," he said with a malicious grin.

The remark had the desired effect of infuriating Damia. The very fact that he could so easily divert her conclusively proved to Afra that her emotions were unhealthily involved. It no longer mattered whether this Sodan was of the race that Jeff and the Rowan had fought. He was a menace in himself.

Somehow Afra got through the evening without a hint of his inner absorption spilling over. Damia, reliving the success of her day, wasn't listening to anything but her own thoughts.

The next day, after the necessary work was completed, Damia and Afra both took to their personal capsules. Afra followed Damia's thrust and held him self silently as she reached the area where she could touch the aura of Sodan. Damia then linked Afra and carried his mind to the alien ship. As soon as the alien touch impinged on Afra's awareness, much was suddenly clear to him: much seen, and worse, much unseen.

What Damia could not, would not, or did not see justified Afra's nagging presentiment of danger. Nothing out of Sedan's mind was visible: and nothing beyond his public mind was touchable. The alien had a very powerful brain. As a quiescent eavesdropper, Afra could not probe, but he widened his own sensitivity to its limit and the impressions he received were as unreassuring as his increasingly stronger intuition of disaster.

It was patent that this Sodan was not of the previous invasion species: that he had been traveling for an unspecifiable length of time far in excess of two Earth decades.

It would not occur to Damia that Afra would linger once he had established his facts. But Afra did linger, discovering other disturbing things. Sedan's mind, undeniably brilliant, was nevertheless augmented. Afra couldn't perceive whether Sodan was the focus for other minds on the ship or in gestalt with the ship's power source. Straining to his limit without revealing himself, Afra tried to pierce the visual screen or, at least, the aural one. All he received was a low stereo babble of mechanical activity, and the bum of heavy elements.

Defeated, Afra withdrew, leaving Sodan and Damia to exchange thoughts that he had to admit were the ploys of courtship. He returned to Auriga and lay in the Tower couch, summoning up the energy to call. Jeff Raven had moved young Larak nearer to Auriga to facilitate subrosa communications. It was not, Afra assured himself, that Damia had deliberately hidden anything in her reports to himself or to Jeff: she was unaware that her usually keen perceptions were fuddled and distorted by her emotional involvement:^ she who had prided herself on her ability to assess dispassionately any emotionally charged incident.

Larak, Afra called, drawing heavily on the gestalt and projecting his own mental/physical concept of Larak to aid him in reaching the mind.

Man, you're beat, Larak came back, sharp, clear green.

Larak, relay back to Jeff that this Sodan...

It's got a name?