To make matters worse, Niall Parollan, being Section Supervisor, had had to take the call, and Helva caught all the nuances in his carefully official words.
Helva seethed inwardly. It would have to be Parollan. But she had the heretofore unexperienced urge to burst outward from her shell in all directions. Parollan would be unbearably righteous no matter when she filed intent to change brawns. There were three more stops, one at Tania Australis and the two Alula counterparts, before she would touch down at Regulus Base. Better let Niall Parollan have his laugh now so he'd be over it by the time she did ditch Teron.
So, girding herself for Parollan's smug reception, Helva flashed a private signal for him to keep the tight beam open. Teron, slave that he was to protocol, would see Captain Brandt off the ship, to the waiting landcar. She'd have a chance to file her intention then.
"Tower to the TH-834. Permission to board you requested by the Antiolathan Xixon," said Durrell Tower.
"Permission refused," Helva said without so much as a glance in Teron's direction.
"Pilot Teron speaking," the brawn interjected forcefully, striding to the console and opening the local channel direct. "What is the purpose of this request?"
"Don't know. The gentlemen are on their way by groundcar."
Teron disconnected and glanced out the open airlock. Brandt's car was just passing the oncoming vehicle midfield.
"You have no right to issue orders independently, Helva, when the request has been properly stated."
"Have you ever heard of an Antiolathan Xixon?" Helva demanded. "And isn't this a restricted mission?"
"I am perfectly aware of the nature of our mission and I have never heard of an Antiolathan Xixon. That doesn't mean there isn't one. And, as it sounds religious and one of our prime Service directives is to be respectful to any and all religious orders, we should receive him."
"True enough. But may I remind Pilot Teron that I am his senior in service by some years and that I have access to memory banks, mechanical memory banks, less prone to lapsus memoriae than the human mind? And there is no Xixon."
"The request was issued properly," Teron repeated.
"Shouldn't we consult Central first?"
"There are some actions that are indicated without recourse to official sanction."
"Oh really?"
The groundcar had arrived and the Xixon people had dutifully requested permission to board. Their arrival meant no chance for Helva to speak privately with Central. She was doubly infuriated by Teron's childish insistence on seeing whoever these Xixon were. She knew perfectly well, if she had countermanded his order, he would have been in the right of it to call her down. But since he had taken the initiative, naturally it was all in order.
The four men stepped on board, two in plain gray tunics, stepping smartly inside the lock as though the vanguard of a great dignitary. Sidearms hung from their belts and both wore curious cylindrical whistles on neckchains. The third man, gray of hair but vigorous, obsequiously ushered in the fourth, a whitehaired man of imposing stature in a long, gray-black robe. He fingered a whistle, larger than the guards, but similar in design, as if it were some sacred talisman.
There was something not at all reassuring, Helva noted, in that obsequious performance. For the grayhaired man, in the action of ushering, was missing no single detail of the cabin's appointments. Just as he switched his direction to put him beside Teron, who was still at the control console, the old man reached the titanium bulkhead behind which Helva resided. The maneuvers were almost completed when something in Helva's mind went wild with alarm.
"Teron, they're imposters," she cried, remembering with sudden hope that the tight beam to Central Worlds was still open.
The white-haired man lost all trace of formal dignity and, mouthing syllables in a frightful cadence, stabbed a finger towards her column.
Helva, in the brief moment before she lost consciousness, saw the two guards blowing on their whistles, the piercing notes sonically jamming the ship's circuitry. She saw Teron slump to the floor of the cabin, felled by the gray-haired man. Then the anesthetic gas the old man had released into her shell overwhelmed her.
My circuits are out of order, Helva mused. . . and then returned to acute awareness.
She saw nothing. She heard nothing. Not so much as a whisper of sound. Not so much as a tiny beam of light.
Helva fought a primeval wave of terror that all but washed her into insanity.
I think, so I live, she told herself with all the force of her will. I can think and I can remember, rationally, calmly, what has happened, what can have happened.
The horror of complete isolation from sound and light was a micrometer away from utter domination of her ego. Coldly, dispassionately, Helva reviewed that final, flashing scene of treachery. The entrance of the four men, the arrangement of the two guards and their whistle-ornaments. A supersonic blast patterned to interfere with her circuitry, to paralyze her defense against the unauthorized activation of her emergency panel. The maneuvering of the third man to overpower Teron.
Now, Helva continued inexorably, this attack was engineered to overcome brawn and brain simultaneously. Only someone intimately connected with the Central Worlds would have access to the information needed to vanquish both mobile and immobile units. The release syllables, and the proper pitch and cadence at which they must be spoken, were highly guarded secrets, usually kept separate. For anyone to have known this information was shocking.
Helva's mind leaped to an obvious, but still startling conclusion. She knew now how the four brain ships had 'disappeared'. They had unquestionably been shanghaied in much the same way she had been. But why? She wondered. And where were the others? Incommunicado like herself? Or driven mad by. . .
I refuse to consider that possibility for myself or any other shell personality, Helva told herself firmly.
Constructive thought, fierce concentration, will relieve the present tedium.
The first ship to disappear was the FT-687. They had also been on a drug run, picking up raw material, though, not distributing it. So had the RD-751 and the PF-699. This line of thought bore possibilities.
The drugs that she had been delivering were available only through application to Central Worlds and were delivered in minute quantities by special teams. A lOOcc ampul of Menkalite could poison the water of an entire planet, rendering its population mindless slaves. A granule of the same drug diluted in a massive protein suspension base would inoculate the inhabitants of several star systems against the virulent encephalitis plagues. Tucanite, a psychedelic compound, was invaluable for psychotherapy in catatonic and autistic cases, since it heightened perceptions and awareness of environment. The frail elders of Tucan had revived waning psychic powers with its use. Deadly as these drugs might be in one form, they were essential to millions in another and must be available. The damoclean sword of use and abuse forever swung perilously over the collective head of mankind.
Not even a shell-person was sacred from the machinations of a disturbed mind. Disturbed mind? Helva's thoughts ground down. Where was that idiot brawn of hers right now? Him and his Neanderthal attributes, his muscles would be very useful. She felt a distinct pleasure within herself as she recalled his being clouted wickedly by the third man. She hoped he was bruised, beaten, and bloodied, But at least he could see and hear without mechanical assistance. . .