Presently he returned, absently rubbing his shoulder. Helva increased magnification and noticed the traces of the subcutaneous blue. He used Tucanite, then.
A chair was produced from somewhere for him and he settled himself. Another disembodied hand provided a table on which a dish of choice foods was set.
"Sing, my pretty obscenity, sing," the mad Xixon commanded, reaching languorously above his head toward her input leads.
Helva complied. She began in the middle of her range, using the most sensuous songs she could remember, augmenting them subtly in bass reflex but keeping the volume tantalizingly low so that he had to crouch forward to hear her.
It got on his nerves and when he peevishly reached out to snatch all but her leads from the board, she begged him not to deprive her peers of sense.
"Surely, sir, you could not, when all you need do is augment my power just slightly from the main board. Even without their very minute power draw on this amplifier, I could not possibly reticulate a croon, for instance."
He sat up straight, his eyes flashing with anticipation.
"You can reticulate the mating croons?"
"Of course," she replied with mild surprise.
He frowned at her, torn between a desire to hear those renowned exotic songs and a very real concern to limit a shell's ability. He was deep in the thrall of the Tucanite now, his senses eager for further stimulation, and the lure of the reticulated croons was too much for him.
He did, however, call over and consult with a fawning technician, who blinked constantly and had a severe tic in one cheek. Fascinated, Helva magnified until she was able to see each muscle fiber jerk.
She plunged into dark soundlessness and then, suddenly, felt renewed with the sense of real power against her leads.
"You have ample power now, singer," he told her, his expression vicious with anticipation. "Perform or you will regret it. And do not try any shell games on me, for I have had them seal off all the other circuits on this amplifier. Sing, shipless one, sing for your sight and sound."
She waited until his laughter died. Even a Reticulan croon could not be heard. . . or be effective. . . above the cackling.
She took an easy one, double-voicing it, treble and counter, testing how much power she could get. It would be enough. And the echo of her lilting croon came back, bouncingly, to reassure her that this installation was not large and was set in natural stone caverns. Very good.
She cut in the overtones, gradually adding bass frequencies but subtly so they seemed just part of the Reticulan croon at first. Even with his heightened sensibilities, he wouldn't realize what she was doing. She augmented the inaudible frequencies.
Her croon was of a particularly compelling variation and she heard, under her singing, if one would permit Reticulan croons such a dignified title, the stealthy advance of his slaves and co-workers, lured close by the irresistible siren's sounds.
She gathered herself and then pumped pure sonic hell into the triple note.
It got him first, heightened as he had been by the Tucanite. It got him dead, his brain irretrievably scrambled from the massive dose of sonic fury. It got the others in the cavern, too. She could hear their shrieks of despair over the weird composite sound she had created, as they fainted.
The overload short circuited several panels in the master board, showering the unconscious and the dead with blinding sparks. Helva threw in what breakers she could to keep her own now-reduced circuit open. Even she felt the backlash of that supersonic blast. Her nerve ends tingled, her 'ears' rang and she felt extremely enervated.
"I'll bet I've developed a very acid condition in my nutrients," she told herself with graveyard humor.
The great room was silent except for hoarse breathing and hissing wires.
"Delia? Answer me. It's Helva."
"Who is Helva? I have no access to memory banks."
"Tagi, can you hear me?"
"Yes." A flat, mechanical affirmative.
"Merl, can you hear me?"
"You're loud."
Helva stared straight ahead at the dead body that had tortured them so cruelly. Oh, for a pair of hands!
Revenge on an inert husk was illogical.
Now what do I do? she wondered. At that point, she remembered that she had been about to divorce Teron. And the tight beam had been left open! Parollan wasn't the kind to sit on his hands. WHERE WAS HE?
"There you are, Helva, back at the old stand," the ST-1 Captain said, patting her column paternally.
She scanned to make certain the release plate was locked back into seamless congruity with the rest of the column.
"Your new cadence-syllable release was tuned into the metal and Chief Railly is the only one who knows it," the Captain assured her.
"And the independent audio and visual relays are attached to the spare synapses of my shell?"
"Good idea, that, Helva. May make it a standard procedure."
"But mine are hooked up?"
"Yes, yours are hooked up. Seems like a case of asking for clearance when the ship was blasted off, this precaution after the fact, but. . ."
"Have you ever been sense-deprived, Captain?" He shuddered and his eyes darkened. None of the Fleet or Brain-Brawn Ship personnel who penetrated the Xixon's asteroid headquarters would be likely to forget the pitiable condition of the shell-people, the amplified human beings who had once been considered invulnerable.
"Tagi, Merl, and Delia will recover. Delia'11 be back in service in a year or so," the Captain said quietly. Then he sighed, for he, too, couldn't bring himself to name Foro. "You people are needed, you know." He leaned forward so suddenly toward her panel that Helva gasped. "Easy, Helva." And he slid his hand down the column. "Nope. Can't even feel the seam. You're all secure."
He carefully gathered up the delicate instruments of his profession, wrapping them in soft surgi-foam.
"How're the brawns?" she asked idly, as she stretched out along her rewired extensions, shrugging into her ship skin.
"Well, Delia's Rife will pull out of Menkalite addiction. He'd had only the one dose. They've still to track down the other two ships, but I expect all the brawns'll survive." His expression altered abruptly as if he had caught an unpleasant smell. "Why did you have your tight beam channel open, Helva? When we got that brawn of yours out of his padded cell, he was furious that you could disregard proper procedure in such a fashion." The Captain managed to sound like Teron for a moment. "Why, if you hadn't, and Cencom hadn't heard the whole damned thing. . . How come you left the channel open?"
"I'd rather not say, but since you've met Teron, you might do a little guessing."
"Huh? Well, whatever the reason, it saved your life."
"It took 'em long enough."
The Captain laughed at her sour complaint. "Don't forget, you'd been cleared, so your kidnappers just lifted off Durrell before your supervisor could stop 'em. But Parollan sure scorched the ears of every operator in frequency range getting Fleet ships after you. At that, with a whole sector to comb, and the drug runners using this asteroid off Borealis as a hideout, too close to Durrell to be even a probability, it took a little time."
"That Xixon thing was smart-mad, hiding right out in sight."
"Well, he had a high intelligence factor," the captain admitted. "After all, he made it into brawn training 20-odd years ago."