*there have been cautions a resistance movement has been discovered in segment etamin this could have caused much trouble dash feels that premature action can negate the effort, as it did in the prior case*
:: the prior case was under dash coordination! a thousand years were lost by that bungling! put the issue: new leadership now ::
*concurrence?*
SILENCE
:: (fools!) ::
Llume the Undulant succeeded in bringing in another client. They were getting harder to fetch now, as the cooperative ones had been accounted for first.
This was a young, handsome officer, a mere 0-3 lieutenant, lowest in the command section of the ship. His aura was in the range of forty to fifty.
“I am Skot of Kade,” he said formally. “Major Llume of Spica requested me to attend.”
Melody smiled and leaned forward enticingly. She had her most effective outfit on: a front curvature that fairly popped out the eyeballs of the average male Solarian, and a posterior tautness that made him pop further down. She’d have to be careful not to overdo these effects with so young a man, lest it distort the reading. The cards were adept at reflecting emanations of lust.
Sure enough, Skot gawked and reddened slightly. “Do you understand the nature of the Tarot?” Melody inquired, shrugging so that less cleavage showed.
“Some. I understand you’ve been doing readings on all the men. They’ve talked about it, some.”
“I’ll bet!” Yael muttered. “They talked about who could see farthest between two breasts.” But she seemed pleased. Female objection to male perception was never very deep.
“I hope they were satisfied with what they perceived,” Melody said aloud.
“Oh, yes!” Then he flushed a bit more. “That is—they found it very interesting. The Tarot, I mean. Views, revelations… uh…”
“Of course. The Tarot is fascinating.” Melody could not resist flexing the muscles of one shoulder to make the mammary on that side twitch. She was playing a game— but the irony was that behind the cynical manipulation of the flesh, she rather liked this innocent-seeming young man. There were differences of personality among hostages. In fact, they were just about like other transferees, except for their alien-galaxy culture and their need to hide this. Were the two galaxies not at war, she would have been able to get along very well with them.
She reviewed the cards, then gave them to him to shuffle. Finally she laid them out, providing a facile spot analysis for each card that had nothing to do with her real observations. She was having trouble with Skot’s responses; they were subtly wrong at key spots. Was she losing her touch?
As the reading concluded, she realized: She had been anticipating the response pattern of an Andromedan transfer from Spheres *, —, /, ::, or oo. Skot had not matched any of these. If some of the hostages were from unknown lesser Spheres, she would have extraordinary difficulty identifying them. But she finally concluded that this man was not a hostage. In fact, he was not even a transfer. He was exactly what he seemed to be: a young, friendly, naive Solarian male of high-Kirlian aura.
He was perhaps the only nonhostage among the officers of the Ace of Swords. Apart from Llume and the Captain, of course.
“Skot—may I call you Skot?—will you come to my cabin for a moment?” Melody said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Miss Dragon, I really can’t—”
“Yael.”
“Miss Yael—it isn’t—I mean—”
“Please. There is something important I want to show you.”
He swallowed. “Oh. Uh, I’ll wait here. You can bring it out.”
“Unlikely.” She took him by the arm and guided him from the lounge.
He balked at her cabin door. “Miss Yael, you don’t understand. I have a girl planetside—”
“Slammer, please escort this man inside my cabin.”
The magnet hesitated. This was a confusing directive, as Skot obviously was not attacking her and so did not need to be moved. And the secret of the baby magnet was inside.
The man became even more nervous. “All right, miss. I’ll talk to you inside. But it won’t—”
As the door closed behind them, Melody’s manner changed. “We cannot be overheard here, Skot. Slammer has made certain. Here’s why.” And she uncovered the nest and lifted out Beanball.
Skot gaped. “A baby magnet!”
“Now you know I stand in violation of ship’s regulations,” Melody said. “I need some help in providing for this—”
“I cannot help you! The rules of the ship…”
“Will you turn me in?”
He gulped again. “Miss, I’m sorry, but I have to. You know that.”
Melody let a strap slip artfully down one shoulder, baring a fair expanse of convex flesh. “I’d be exceedingly grateful if you would not.”
His jaw firmed. “I’m sorry. Had you really intended to keep this secret, you should not have shown me.”
He was quite right of course. But Slammer, recognizing the implied threat, moved, jamming the officer against the wall. “Slammer—easy!” Melody cried.
Meanwhile, Yael had caught on to some of what was transpiring. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You can’t threaten him; he’s an officer!”
Melody ignored the inner voice, though she found herself sickened at her own actions. She was not cut out for this!
She controlled her voice. “Slammer will crush you if I suggest you mean me harm. He’s not so stupid as not to know the harm your report could do. And if he got the notion you meant his baby harm…”
Sweat beaded Skot’s forehead, but he did not relent. “I am loyal to my ship. I must be honest. I must report. If you—if you do this, there will be an investigation, and the magnet will be discovered anyway.”
Maybe somewhere there were females who were natural conspirators, who actually liked this sort of thing. Melody knew she was not, and never would be that kind. She was doing this badly, hating it, disgusted with herself— still she had to proceed. “True. Unless I hid the magnet and told them you had tried to rape me. I have reason to think that Captain Boyd would believe me.”
Skot closed his eyes, knowing enough of the ship’s skuttlebutt to comprehend the probable rage of the Captain. But his voice did not waver. “I must report. I will not be drawn into a conspiracy.”
The man was inflexible! The fear of death was on him but he would not yield a fraction of his honor. Feeling guilty, Melody switched back to sexual temptation. “It is such a small thing I ask,” she said persuasively. “A few lumps of coal, some bits of metal, a place under your bunk for the baby to hide. No one would know.” Now she shrugged the other strap down. The material peeled away from her front, suddenly exposing both mammaries in all their rondure.
Skot turned on her a look of disgust tinged with pity. “No,” he whispered.
She dropped the burden. “Slammer, let him go,” Melody said. “He is a friend.”
The magnet withdrew so suddenly that the man stumbled forward. He caught his balance. “You don’t understand. I said—”
“I understand you are an honest man,” Melody said, drawing up her dress to cover her mammaries. She was not disappointed, in this case, that their appeal had failed. “You will do what you believe is right, even though you die for it. You are loyal to your galaxy.”
He nodded, not trusting her. “You will let me go?”
“Suppose I were to show you that your loyalty is misplaced?”
His eyes narrowed. “You—you’re an agent of Andromeda? You brought me here to try to convert me to—?”
Now she could smile. “I’m an agent of Milky Way. Were you aware of my aura?”