There were handholds along the walls and ceiling, reminding Melody that ships of space were not always operating with convenient gravity. Up could become down, and complete freefall would make perambulation awkward. So one had to be able to grab and pull.
They entered a fair-sized room, well furnished with bolted-down couches and tables—the officer’s lounge. There was a quick round of introductions. Melody dutifully shook hands with each man and woman, mentally noting the names and aural intensity of each. They were all high-Kirlian entities—surprisingly high, in the fifty to one hundred range. Sphere Sol must have impressed every Kirlian available into service in the space fleet! Had the other Spheres done the same for their own ships?
“And here is your cabin—next to mine,” Dash said.
“Thank you. I will not be needing it, as I am returning to my home immediately after the completion of the mission,” Melody said briskly. “If you will show me the subject and set up the equipment…” She avoided the term “hostage”; surely the Captain knew her mission in detail, but the other officers would not.
“I assumed you would want to acclimatize,” Dash said. “A young girl like you, first visit to the fleet…”
“He’s on the make, all right,” Yael remarked. “Why don’t we go ahead and—”
But Melody still had the caution of age. “Let’s keep him guessing,” she told Yael. And to the Captain: “I appreciate your solicitude. You can express it most conveniently by facilitating my mission.”
“You certainly are businesslike. That’s good,” he commented ruefully. “I would not have reported the, shall we say, subject, if I had not anticipated an efficient and circumspect response. This is a most important matter.”
“Yes,” Melody agreed as they proceeded down another hall. “Do you have her under sedation?”
“No, of course not,” Dash said. “We don’t know how many subjects there are, but cannot safely assume this is the only one. If we showed that we were on to her, the others would act, perhaps killing her before we could interrogate her, and possibly going on to sabotage the ship. Since this is the command ship of the fleet, that would be problematical.”
“Yes, I understand,” she agreed.
“We would also lose whatever chance we had to crack this mystery, and that is far more important than either this ship or this whole fleet.” He paused. “I’m going to introduce you to her as the daughter of an Imperial Minister, so she won’t be suspicious. Our Ministers (no offense to Etamin!) are not necessarily overly bright, and they tend to meddle in things they hardly comprehend, and their children do the same. So your behavior will not seem peculiar to her. It will take us a while to get the equipment moved in and set up and tested, and we don’t want to alert her. Don’t get near enough for her to pick up your aura; if she recognized its strength she would take alarm.”
“I am not entirely ignorant of the requirements of the situation,” Melody reminded him primly, giving her bosom another twitch to abate any implied criticism. She had verified by her observation of the females aboard ship that her host’s architecture was indeed superior to the norm.
“She’s an officer in the medic corps,” Dash continued, giving that architecture a lingering glance. Whether as lowly as an exile crewman or as elevated as a seasoned captain, they all looked. “She is the officer in charge of atmospherics, among other things. A peculiarly vital spot. In time of crisis, she could sabotage this entire ship merely by making an ‘error’ in the computer setting for the craft atmosphere. We hype our air a bit for action, you see, and damp it in periods of inertia.”
“You play a dangerous game, leaving her there,” Melody remarked.
“There are very high stakes.”
“How did you discover her?”
“My intense aura. Not quite in a league with yours, of course—but still, the highest in the fleet. I can tell a lot about a person merely by shaking hands with him. High-Kirlians have sensitivities that low-Kirlians hardly suspect, as you know.”
“Yes.” The normals thought that no Kirlian aura could be measured or typed except by the use of complex equipment. For normals, that was true.
“When I touched Tiala—”
“You are good at touching people,” Melody remarked.
“Quite. I’m not quite as aggressive as I seem. I allow myself the repute of a Cassanova as a pretext to touch people long enough and intimately enough to analyze their Kirlian auras properly. I am assured, for example, that you have what may be the highest rating in our galaxy, though no prior information was given me about you. You must be well over two hundred! In Tiala’s case—”
“How do you analyze male auras?”
“We have frequent physical fitness sessions, of course. We indulge in sports and unarmed combat. I happen to hold the ship championship in encumbered wrestling. It can take some time to overcome a man when your feet are bound.”
“I can imagine.” She could also imagine how difficult it would be to get away from this man, once he had hold —even if the magnet were not hovering close behind.
“In Tiala’s case, I took her to bed—because I was suspicious. I made sure she had no inkling of my real interest in her. I am an excellent lover.”
“I believe it!” Yael said eagerly. But Melody kept silent.
“And I verified that there was a fundamental difference in her aura; it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. For one thing, it was too strong, a good ten units above its official rating—or so I thought. But personal judgment is largely intuitive; only the machine can make a really precise readout. So I photographed the aura secretly and sent the picture to Imperial Outworld for analysis. And it didn’t match at all. So we knew an alien had made her hostage.”
“Very perceptive, Dash.” And ruthless. He had played sex with a girl to trap her aural secret. Did she think he loved her?
“Thank you. It is part of my job to protect my ship.” And what else would he do—to protect his ship? “It is important that I come to know the subject without arousing her suspicion,” Melody said. “Perhaps I should play a game with her.”
“Well, I’m not sure the daughter of a Minister would—”
“Who can guess what the daughter of a Minister might do? I know some very good games. Tarot, for example. It—”
“Tarot!” Dash exclaimed. “I happen to be a scholar of that discipline myself.”
Melody appraised him with renewed interest. “Temple?”
“No. Free lance. I was never a Tarotist, just a casual student. But I dare say I know it as well as any.”
Marvelous, if true. Melody had spent most of her life in the study and practice of free-lance Tarot, and would quickly be able to determine his level of proficiency. But that could wait upon convenience. “Really? What is your Significator?”
“King of Aura,” he said. “Cluster deck, of course. Yours?”
“Queen—of Aura.”
“Oho! I should have known! High intelligence, strong will, intense aura. We are much alike.”
Very much alike. Melody could feel herself being drawn to this ruthless man, compelled by the commonality of qualities. She had never mated because she had never encountered an entity who was her equal, though a number had supposed they were. Or so she liked to tell herself. Perhaps the better, bitter truth was that after the Star of her hope and loss, so long ago, nothing in the universe could satisfy her. What weird chance had brought her to this handsome Solarian? Or was this Perseus, come to rescue the chained lady from the monster?
She decided to fend him off a bit longer, until she had opportunity to do a reading on this problem. There was still too much she did not know. “Alike within a twenty percent tolerance,” she said. Since there were five Kings and five Queens in the Cluster deck, and these were the only cards normally used as Significators for grown entities, the chances of matching suits were hardly remote. And entities in matching suits could be quite dissimilar in practice—as different as Solarian from Mintakan. She could not afford to attach undue importance to something which was really not a coincidence, but a reflection of their high auras.