"CENCOM, THE RELEASE WORD!" Helva pleaded on the tight beam just as the 732's crooning broke off abruptly. Helva could almost feel the ship's held breath.
Delay! Delay! Where was Cencom!
"Lia, the interference on my contact is incredible. Can't you clear up the relays? That dwarf is wreaking havoc. . ."
Even Kira jumped involuntarily as Helva, deepening her voice to a baritone approximation of Seber's, ad libbed frantically.
"Can't seem to read you clearly. Lia? Lia? You got wires crossed?"
"Seber? Seber?" shrieked the rogue ship, her voice wild with incredulous hope. "I'm trapped. I'm trapped. I was thrown off course when the edge of the volcano blew. I tried to die. I tried to die, too."
Kira was fumbling with the draperies at the bulkhead. Her escort, roused from their euphoria as they sensed sacrilege, dove toward Kira. Her swift hand caught one on the voice box in a deadly chop. She ducked under the other man, using her body to throw him against the bier so squarely that his head cracked ominously against the stone and he slumped down.
"KH, the release is na-thom-te-ah-ro, watch the pitch!"
And Helva, knowing she was in effect executing one of her own kind, broadcast the release word to the 732. As the syllables with their pitched nuances activated the release of the access panel, Kira caught the plate, reached in deftly and threw the valve that would flood the inside of the shell with anesthesia.
"I can't see you, Seber. Where are. . ." and the 732's despairing wail was stilled in longed for oblivion.
Kira whirled, the panel clinking behind the concealing draperies as cowled figures lurched into the main cabin from the quarters behind.
"Hold!" Helva commanded in Lia's voice. "He Who Orders has decided. Take the barefaced woman back to the ship. Such blasphemous seed is not for the chosen of Alioth."
Kira, again trancelike, followed the dazed hoods back down the steps.
"Helva, what in the fardles is happening there?" Cencom demanded within the 834.
"He has decided," the fanatical mob in the plaza groaned and swayed in the thrall of the hallucinogenic fumes.
"Helva!" snapped Cencom.
"Oh, shut up all of you," said Helva, near a breaking point.
"He has ordered. That is Eternal Truth."
She watched just long enough to be sure that the reeling, freak-drunk Aliothites would not interfere with Kira's return. How they could, Helva couldn't imagine, for they were dropping by the hundreds, exhausted by fumes and frenzy.
"You better have a good explanation for deliberately abrogating specific restrictions in your journey tape regarding Dylanistic. . ."
"I'll Dylanize you, you fatuous oaf," Helva cut in angrily. "The end justifies the means, and might I remind you that for some reason, unknown forever to God and man, your list of restricted planets did NOT include Alioth, as by the fingernails of that God they should have!"
Cencom sputtered indignantly.
"Control yourself," Helva suggested acidly. "I found your long-lost rogue and I have killed her. And I did some rough but effective therapy on your precious Kira of Canopus. What more do you want of one brain shell? Huh?"
Cencom maintained silence for 60 stunned seconds.
"Where is Kira?" and Helva could swear Cencom sounded contrite.
"She's all right."
"Put her on."
"She's all right!" Helva repeated with weary emphasis. "She's on her way back from the Temple."
The spaceport rocked under a multiple eruption just as the vehicle bearing Kira screeched to a halt at the lift. Helva unlocked the mechanism and Kira leaped on before the guards came to their senses. The ground danced under the ship's stabilizers and, as Kira dove from airlock to pilot's couch, Helva slammed the lock shut and precipitously lifted from grim Alioth,
In the tail scanners they saw the guards retreating to safety as the gantry tumbled leisurely down. Bright jewels dotted the receding planet as it gave them a volcanic sendoff.
"Scout Kira of the KH-834 reporting," the slender girl said crisply to Cencom, shedding her cloak. Helva half-expected a shower of hairpins to follow but Kira remained tautly erect before the tight beam. She gave a terse report, demanding to know why traders had not reported the presence of Service-type contact buttons plainly visible on every Aliothite. And why, a far more criminal omission, the hallucinogenic gas eruptions had not been reported.
"Hallucinogenic gas?" Cencom echoed weakly. Such instances were the nightmare of colonization; entire populations could be subjected to illegal domination by such emissions, as indeed had happened on Alioth.
"I recommend strongly that all traders dealing with Alioth in the last 50 years be questioned as to their motives in suppressing such information from Central Worlds. And discover who was the semi-intelligent CW representative who cleared this freak-off planet for colonization."
Cencom was reduced to incoherent sputters.
"Stop gargling," Kira suggested sweetly, "and order an all-haste planet-therapy team here. You've got an entire society to reorient to the business of living. We'll file a comprehensive report from Nekkar, but now I've got to inspect our children. That was a rough take-off. Over and out." And Kira closed the tight beam down.
With a fluid motion she propelled herself to the kitchen, shaking her braids free and massaging her scalp with rough fingers.
"My head is pounding!" she exclaimed, reaching for coffee. "That gas was unbelievably malodorous." She leaned wearily against the counter, her shoulders sagging in fatigue.
Helva waited, knowing Kira was sorting her thoughts.
"The closer I got to that temple, the deeper the terrible miasma of grief. It was almost visible, Helva," she said, and then added scathingly, "and I wallowed in it. Until that Dylan of yours reached me, Helva."
Her eyes widened respectfully. "The hair on the back of my neck stood up straight. That final chord got me, right here," she groaned, jabbing at her abdomen with a graphic fist. "Thorn would have given his guts to compose such a powerful Dylan." Her shoulders jerked spasmodically in a violent muscle spasm.
"That awful corpse!" She closed her eyes and shuddered, shaking her head sharply to rid herself of the effect. "I think. . ." she murmured, her eyes narrowing with self-appraisal, "I have been thinking, I had done the same thing to Thorn."
"I think perhaps you had," Helva agreed softly.
Kira sipped at her coffee, her face tired but alive, the mask of vivacity replaced by an inner calm. "I have been so stupid," she said with trenchant self-contempt.
"Not even Cencom is infallible," Helva drawled.
Kira threw back her head in a whoop of laughter.
"That's Eternal Truth!" she crowed, dancing back into the main cabin.
Helva watched the victory dance, immeasurably pleased with the outcome of the affair as far as Kira was concerned. She could not regret that she had had to kill one of her own peers. Lia had really died years before with her scout. That tortured remnant had peace at last, and so had Kira. She and Helva would continue together on their stork run, picking up the seeds from. . .
Helva let out a yip of exultation. Kira stared at her, startled. "What hit you?"
"It's so ridiculously simple I can't imagine someone never suggested it to you. Or maybe they did and you rejected it."
"I'll never know unless you tell me what it is," Kira replied caustically.
"One of the facets of your grief psychosis. . ."
"I'm over it now," Kira interrupted Helva, her eyes flashing angrily.
"Ha to that. One of the facets has been the lack of progeny from your seed and Thorn's? Right?"