. . . and Selar felt him slipping away, and Soleta called out his name, and Selar felt his loss ripping at her, and then Soleta was suddenly yanked downward, further downward, left looking upward at Voltak in the way that a swimmer trapped beneath a frozen lake sees the face of someone above, on the ice, staring down at them . . .
. . . and Selar's mind was left naked and exposed, Soleta probing with Selar's expertise, burrowing down to the core of her psychic makeup, seeking, searching, and buffeted with wave upon wave of heat, red heat that washed over her in delicious waves of agony that she could not ignore, that swept into every pore of her skin, enveloping her, caressing her, and she moaned for the exquisite torment of it all . . .
. . . and she felt something calling her, driving her, and it was voices, not just hers, not just Soleta's and Selar's, not just Voltak's, but Vulcans, hundreds, thousands, millions of them, driving her toward the heat, toward the red waves, as if they were trying to pound her into an inferno shore, and she welcomed it, she welcomed the heat and the waves, she could not, would not turn away from it, she embraced it, wanted it, wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything, and her breath was coming in short gasps, their minds slamming together . . .
My God. . .
The separation was violent. Soleta yanked away from her, and Selar tumbled backward, the chair overturning and spilling her onto her back. Soleta fell over, rolled off the couch and onto the floor. She lay there panting, gasping, her fingers still spasming as sensations shook her body. Sweat was dripping off her forehead, spattering onto the floor. With supreme effort she managed to look over at Selar, who didn't appear to be in much better shape. Selar was lying on her back, her arms outstretched, sucking in air gratefully, as if she had forgotten to breathe for however long they had been joined. It clearly took tremendous effort but slowly Selar turned her head and managed to look at Soleta. Soleta, for her part, felt embarrassed, like a voyeur, even though it had been Selar who had asked for the probe.
Selar was trying to mouth a word. Soleta propped herself up on one elbow and angled herself closer to Selar, just close enough to hear her say it:
"Impossible" was the low whisper. Selar had now actually managed to muster enough strength to shake her head, and again she murmured, " Impossible."
"Apparently . . . not." Soleta was surprised, even impressed, with the calm in her voice. Ever since learning the truth of her background, stoicism had not been something that she had always been able to maintain. Here, though, she was clearly capable of rising to the occasion. "Apparently it's not impossible at all."
"But it was . . . it was barely two years ago . . . I . . . I went through it . . . not time . . . not for years, it is not time . . ."
"Perhaps it's because of the way that it ended the first time," Soleta said reasonably. "The urge was never truly satisfied, but because you were mindmelded at the time . . . it sent you into a sort of psychic shock . . . numbed you . . . but it's finally worn off . . ."
"You . . . you do not know . . . what you are saying . . ." Selar's face had gone dead white.
"Maybe not," agreed Soleta. "Maybe I don't know what I'm saying at all. Maybe I'm completely crazy . . . except I know what I saw, Selar. I know what I felt and experienced. Whether you like it or not, whether you want to admit it or not . . . what you're going through right now is the first stages of Pon farr.Your bad experience the first time threw your system off, but now the mating frenzy is back with a vengeance. And I have absolutely no idea what you're going to do about it."
And Selar had the sick feeling that, somewhere in the ship, Burgoyne was sniffing the air and grinning. And she wasn't far wrong.
VII.
THROUGH THE CORRIDORSof the Kayven Ryin,Si Cwan moved with the utmost care, flexing his arm to work out the kinks in his shoulder.
He was alone.
He had given Zak Kebron the slip, for Kebron had quickly made it clear he had no intention of letting Cwan handle matters the way he wanted to. The idea of not using any of the hand weapons, for starters, was intolerable to Kebron. In his arrogance—at least, arrogance the way Si Cwan saw it—Kebron felt that he himself did not have to depend on weapons. But he was of the forceful opinion that if Si Cwan had the opportunity to use a weapon on Zoran, he should take it. That nothing was going to be accomplished by treating the situation as a grudge match.
But this had gone far beyond grudges. Si Cwan knew, beyond any question, that he was going to kill Zoran. He simply had to. Honor would not allow anything less. And he had to do it with his bare hands. This was not a question of honor allowing anything less, but rather his simple determination to make Zoran's punishment as painful as possible.
So Si Cwan had, moving quickly, left the Brikar behind. He'd been subtle about it; give him some credit. He'd darted down a corridor at a faster clip than the Brikar could maintain, and then run off down a connector, slid through a maintenance tube, and next thing he knew, he was on his own. And if he should live long enough to be in a position where he need make excuses, he could always simply claim that they had become accidentally separated from one another. Accidents, after all, did happen.
He heard a noise.
It was definitely not Zak Kebron. He already knew that rock-steady footfall. No, it was quick, extremely light-footed. He would almost have thought it was the movement of a small animal, so fast and nearly insubstantial was it. But Si Cwan wasn't fooled, not for a moment.
He crouched down and moved like a giant spider, arms and legs operating in perfect synchronization. He presented as minimal a target as possible, should it come to that.
He moved past one room, the door to which was closed, and from within he thought he heard something. A quick footfall, or perhaps something on a table within that was slightly jolted and sent skidding. Something. He paused outside the door, crouching to one side, trying to determine whether or not he should burst into the room. It could very well be that someone was waiting for him to do precisely that, and had a vicious weapon aimed squarely at the door.
Or perhaps they had anticipated that he would think entry through the door was a trap . . . and were instead aimed at the ceiling, or at a vent, hoping that he would make his entry that way.
He still had the plasma blaster slung across his shoulders, and practicality began to rear its ugly head. He still had every reason to want to throttle Zoran . . . but by the same token, he had a few more reasons to want to continue to live.
Well . . . perhaps using the plasma blaster wouldn't be such a crime after all, as long as the killing blow was struck by hand. That was, after all, the important thing.
He unslung the blaster, aimed it squarely at the door, and fired. At such close range, the plasma blast plowed through the door like acid through paper, and Si Cwan leaped headlong through the door, shoulder rolled and came up to face . . .
. . . nothing.
He was inside a laboratory, and there was no evidence of anyone else there. There was a beaker rolling across a table. Other than that, nothing.
He muttered a curse as he slung the plasma blaster over his back. The noise of the plasma blaster would undoubtedly attract Zoran or his compatriots there.