That had been an unnerving development, Helva reflected. If he'd actually qualified and then developed neural maladjustments. . . He had taken enough Tucanite to break the deconditioning mind blocks, another matter that was going to be reevaluated by Central Worlds as a result of this incident, and had managed to insinuate himself into maintenance crews on Regulus Base, laying the groundwork for his operation by the judicious use of addictive drugs on key employees. Then, using Central World brains ships with drugged brawns under his control, he could have landed anywhere, including Regulus Base.
"I'll be off now," the Captain said, saluting her respectfully. "Let your own brawn take over now."
"Not if I can help it," Helva replied.
Whatever bond of loyalty she had once had for Teron had dissolved as surely as she had been parted from her security. Teron, having decided that he was hopelessly incarcerated, had stolidly composed himself to await the worst with calm dignity. . . as any logical man ought to do.
On anyone else's tapes (including the Captain's, to judge by the expression on his face), such logic was cowardice; and that was Helva's unalterable conclusion. Although she would grant that his behavior had certainly been consistent.
Delia's Rife, on the other hand, had tried to break out. He had clawed a foothold in the padded fabric of his cell, lacerating hands and feet in the attempt to reach the ceiling access hatch. Dizzy from a Menkalite injection, confused and weak from starvation intended to allow the Menkalite to work unhindered in his system, he had actually crawled as far as the airlock when the rescue group had arrived.
Helva let the ST-1 down the personnel lift and ran a thorough but hasty flip-check of herself, scanners, sensory meters, power-pile drive chamber, inventory. It was like revisiting a forgotten treasury of minor miracles. Helva wondered if she had ever before appreciated the versatility incorporated in her ship body, had really valued the power she had at her disposition, or cherished the ingenuity of her engineers. Oh, it was good to be back together again.
"Helva?" a low voice spoke tentatively. "Are you alone now?" It was Central Worlds on the tight beam.
"Yes. The ST-1 has just left. You can probably reach him. . ."
"Shove him," and then Helva realized that the hoarse voice must belong to Niall Parollan. "I just wanted to know you were back where you belong. You're sure you're all right, Helva?"
Niall Parollan? Laryngitic with concern? Helva was flattered and surprised, considering his uncomplimentary description hurled at her at their last parting.
"I'm intact again if that's what you mean, Parollan," she replied in droll good humor.
She could have sworn she heard a sigh over the tight beam.
"That's my girl," Parollan laughed, so it must have been a wheeze she'd heard. "Of course," and he cleared his throat, "if you hadn't had your synapses scrambled on Beta Corvi, you'd've listened to me when I tried to tell you that that simple simian Acthionite was a regulation-bound brass. . ."
"Not brass, Niall," Helva interrupted sharply, "not brass. Brass is a metal and Teron has none."
"Oh ho ho, so you admit I was right about him?"
"To err is human."
"Thank God!"
Just then Teron requested permission to board.
"I'll see you later, Helva. I couldn't stomach. . ."
"Don't go, Parollan. . ."
"Helva, my own true love, I've been glued to this tight beam for three days for your sake and the stim-tabs have worn off. I'm dead in the seat!"
"Prop your eyelids open for a few moments more, Niall. This'll be official," she told Parollan as she activated the personnel lift for Teron. She felt a cold dislike replace the bantering friendliness she had been enjoying.
Big as life and disgustingly Neanderthal, her brawn strode into the main control room, saluting with scant ceremony toward her bulkhead. Strode? He swaggered, Helva thought angrily, looking not the least bit worse for his absence.
Teron rubbed his hands together, sat himself down in the pilot's chair, flexed his fingers before he poised them, very businesslike, over the computer keyboard.
"I'll just run a thorough checkdown to be sure no damage was done," His words were neither request nor order.
"Just like that, huh?'* Helva asked in a dangerously quiet voice. Teron frowned and swiveled round in the chair toward her panel.
"Our schedule has been interrupted enough with this mishap."
"Mishap?"
"Modulate your tone, Helva. You can't expect to use those tricks on me."
"I can't expect what?"
"Now," he began placatingly, jerking his chin down, "I take into consideration you've been under a strain recently. You should have insisted that I oversee that ST-1 Captain during that installation. You might have sustained some circuit damage, you know."
"How kind of you to consider that possibility," she said. That was it!
"You could scarcely be harmed, physically, contained as you are in pure titanium," he said and swung back to the console.
"Teron of Acthion, all I can say at this point is that it's a damned good thing for you that I am contained behind pure titanium. Because if I were mobile, I would kick you down that shaft so fast. . ."
"What has possessed you?"
For once, sheer blank illogical amazement flashed across Teron's face.
"Get out! Get off my deck! Get out of my sight. Get OUT!" Helva roared, pouring on volume with each word, with no regard for the tender structure of the human ear.
With sheer sound she drove him, hands clapped to the sides of his head, off the deck, down the side of the 834 as fast as she could escalate the lift.
"Take me for granted, will you? Unreliable organism, am I? Illogical, irresponsible, and inhuman. . ." Helva bellowed after him in a planet-sized shout. And then she burst out laughing, as she realized that such emotional behavior on her part was the only way she could have routed the over-logical Teron of Acthion.
"Did you hear that, Niali Parollan?" she asked in a reasonable but nevertheless exultant tone. "Niall? Hey, Cencom, you on the tight beam. . . answer me?"
From the open channel came the shuddering discord of a massive adenoidal snore.
"Niall?" The sleeper wheezed on, oblivious, until Helva chuckled at this additional evidence of human frailty.
She asked and received clearance from the asteroid's half-ruined spaceport. She was going to have a long chat with Chief Railly when she returned.
Her penalty for 'divorcing' Teron would be a speck against the finder's fee for four shanghaied BB ships. And there ought to be a Federation bonus for aid in the apprehension of drug runners. Totaled, if true justice was giving her half a chance, the rewards might just make her a free ship, out of debt, truly her own mistress. The thought was enough to set her singing.
The Partnered Ship
Hurtling through space at speeds no unprotected human could tolerate, Helva contemplated the delightful knowledge that she had paid off her indebtedness to Central Worlds Brain-Brawn Ship Service. She was her own mistress. Free. And free to choose, at long last, a partner, a brawn, a mobile human to companion her wherever she chose to wander. She was no longer limited to those sterling souls, fresh and eager from Academy training, fully indoctrinated in Central Worlds' ethos, conditioned to a set way of thinking and acting, molded according to predetermined physical, intellectual, spiritual, psychological requisites, and not what she had in mind. She could pick anyone now. She could. . .
Well, now, come to think of it, she couldn't. Brawns, for all their shortcomings, were not ordinary technicians, cranked out by the thousands from specialists' programs on every planet. They were especially trained and educated to function in an unusual partnership. She could not pick out an agreeable personality and find him deadheading on that charm. Even on short contracts, with an industrial or planetary agency, she'd have to rely to a certain degree on a brawn with sense, integrity, and a certain breadth of education, or she'd get royally rooked, industrially and systematically. And besides, she wanted a permanent partner, not another transient. She wanted companionship, an intelligent, sympathetic friend; not a passive employee. Another factor limited her field further. Many otherwise well-adjusted citizens of a complex, civilized galaxy were revolted or superstitiously terrified at the thought of a human being entombed in a bulkhead, connected to the operational circuitry of a powerful space ship. The neurosis could even extend to personalities like Teron, who deluded themselves that a shell person was really not human, was actually a highly sophisticated computer.