Part 20 (1/2)

'Would she?' 'The Rowan mentioned Cera had reached an understanding.

A nice lad, she says, a 'Jeff Raven's own population explosion.

You watch over all of them, don't you?' Gollee said, amused. 'But Damia more than the rest.' Afra shrugged. 'She's so much like the Rowan, it comes naturally.' Afra furrowed his brows. 'But Aurigae?

That's going to be a tough Tower to run.' 'Who knows? Your Damia may well have found herself a soul mate before she gets to Aurigae,' Gollee said cheerfully.

The food arrived, along with an ecstatic Luciano, and the subject of Damia and Aurigae was not renewed.

Iota Aurigae was a blaze at zenith, to Damia's left, glinting off her personal capsule. Capella's light, from the right nadir, was a pulsing blue-white. Starlight from the Milky Way bathed her, too, but the only sound was her even breathing as she allowed her mind to open fully to the mindless, echo-freedom of deep s.p.a.ce.

It was as if she could feel the separate cerebral muscles relaxing, expanding, as her tall slender body went gradually limp. She enjoyed these moments of total mental relief from the stresses of Aurigae Tower. But her purpose in these jaunts had a more important application than a mental vacation for herself: she must also be certain that no unwelcome visitors approached the Nine Star League from deep s.p.a.ce beyond Iota Aurigae, the furthest human colony from Earth.

Eventually the League would have sufficient sentries to ring the heliopause of every one of its member star systems.

But the effective warning system evolved by the combined effort of Fleet and Commercial Engineers was expensive, and time-consuming to manufacture, and almost as tedious to install when completed since each network had to be designed for the star system it would protect. Since the Beetles had twice tried to penetrate Denebian s.p.a.ce, that star system had been first to receive heliopausal sentinels. Despite the fact that the home system was already festooned with sophisticated sensors and listening devices in swarms about each of the inner planets and a gigantic listening mechanism on Neptune, Terra received the second system.

Over the next fifteen years, devious politicking, strikes, ultimatums and power plays by nervous administrators on the other Systems - Altair, Capella, Betelgeuse and Procyon - were frequent: each Star determined to have equal safeguards against alien incursions. As the newest, and least populated, of the colonies, Iota Aurigae relied on Damia's weekly reconnaissance.

Which suited both the Aurigaens and Damia perfectly.

Perhaps that was why she so enjoyed the independent, reckless spirit of Aurigaens. They didn't give a d.a.m.n about their 'perilously' unprotected status. They were arrogantly confident of their own resources and besides, wasn't Deneb on the far side of the galaxy from Aurigae?

Most of the energetic, hard-working colonists did not really have time to worry about something that 'might' happen.

Then, too, after nearly twenty years, the memory of the Deneb Penetration had faded from active memory into a tale to frighten children with. Damia often wondered how many people - with the exclusion of all Denebians - remembered just how nearly the Nine Star League had come to being overrun by the hive species. Certainly, during her childhood on Deneb, that lesson was reinforced time and time again. And, regularly, the matter of adequate warning systems still exercised the Fleet, Nine Star League Senior Senators - of all species - and all members of the Federated Telepath and Teleportation System.

Much as Damia liked Aurigae's raw and ruthless ways, she did find the utter peace of deep s.p.a.ce an anodyne to the constant demands of her position as FT&T Prime. While gradually Aurigae was beginning to supply all agricultural needs and even manufacture needed parts for its technologies, she still had to haul in significant quant.i.ties of food stuffs and a mult.i.tude of the bits and pieces that Aurigae did not have the time or facilities to manufacture for itself More to the point, she had to send off immense loads of the raw ores, minerals and rare earths which made the Aurigae colony valuable, and affluent: commodities that in the main went into the manufacture of the low-pulse radar warning systems for other star systems.

Initially there'd been trouble with the Colonial Council in accepting Damia who'd been eighteen when her parents had judged her ready to a.s.sume FT&T responsibilities.

She'd been furious with the implied criticism that she, a Gwyn-Raven, of a family that already boasted four Primes, was too immature to handle a Tower. Worse, she had caught just a trace of anxiety in her father's mind that she was too flighty to settle down to the hard and tedious work of a Prime.

So she'd shown them all her mettle in her first three months' trial in Aurigae Tower. She'd mentally cajoled or bullied the Tower staff into line in the first week and had never lost so much as a single s.h.i.+pment nor bounced a cargo, no matter how heavy or awkward.

Settling her staff so quickly had been a minor personal triumph for Damia, since her own mother had juggled Tower personnel for nearly five years before she'd been satisfied.

Occasionally, even Damia's resilient mind felt the strain and required respite from the insistent murmur of broadcasting thought that beat, beat, beat like a tinnitus in her brain. Ironically, because she had done so well, Aurigaens now tended to take her for granted, to a.s.sume the fast and faultless service she rendered in her gestalt with the mighty dynamos of the Tower.

With a frick of a finger, Damia screened out the over-brilliant starlight and opened her eyes. The softened stargleams, points of gem fire in the black of s.p.a.ce, winked and pulsed at her. Idly, she identified the familiar patterns they made, these silent friends.

Somehow the petty grievances that built up inside her were gently dispersed as the overwhelming impersonality of cold nothingness brought them into proper perspective.

She could even forget her present preoccupation for a moment: forget how lonely she was; how she envied Larak, his loving, lovely wife and their new son; envied her mother the company of her husband and children; envied the Rowan Afra -- Afra! What right had he to interfere, to reprimand her!

His words still seared.

'You've been getting an almighty vicarious charge out of peeking in on Larak and Jenna. Scared Jenna out of her wits, lurking in her mind while she was in labour! You leave them both alone!' Damia was forced to admit that such an intrusion had been the most shameless breach of good manners. But how had Afra known? Jenna hadn't even been aware until the split second when Damia had felt, as its mother did, the despairing birth howl of Jenna's son. Unless Larak had caught her as she withdrew from Jenna's mind and told him. She sighed. Yes, Larak would have known she was eavesdropping. Though he was the only T-3 among her brothers and sisters, he had always been extremely sensitive to her mind touch. How often she and Larak had been able to overwhelm any combination of others, even when Jeran and Cera had teamed up with Talented cousins against them. Damia had never tried to a.n.a.lyse the trick, but, somehow, she could switch into a higher mental gear, doubling the capability of other minds within her focus.

Afra's scorching rebuke had come as an intense humiliation: one of several she had suffered from him. The worst of that was that invariably Afra had been correct. Well, better by that yellow-eyed, green-skinned T-3 Capellan than her father, acting in his capacity as Earth Prime.

She rather hoped that her father had not learned of that appalling breach of T-etiquette.

Odd, though, she hadn't heard as much as a whisper from Afra since then. It must be over seven months. He had listened in as she'd apologized to both Jenna and Larak, and then silence. He couldn't be that angry with her. Or maybe he could. Afra's Methody upbringing made him a martinet on points of etiquette.

Damia diverted her thoughts away from Afra, and went through the ritual of muscle relaxation, of mental wipeout.

She must be back in the Tower very soon. In a way, the fact that she could handle Prime duties with no higher ratings than a T-6 to a.s.sist had certain disadvantages. The Tower staff could handle only routine planetary traffic, but she had to be on hand for all interstellar telepathic and teleportation commerce.

It would be wonderful to have a T-2, or even a T-3, to share her duties: someone who could understand.

Not someone - be honest with yourself out here in s.p.a.ce, Damia.

Some man. Only men shy away from you as if you'd developed Lynx-sun cancers. And the only other unmarried Prime was her own brother, Jeran.

Come to think about Jeran, the smug tone of his recent mind-touches as they exchanged cargoes and messages between Deneb and Aurigae undoubtedly meant that he had found a likely mate, too. When the Denebians paused to use their wits instead of their muscles, they discovered in themselves strong embryo Talents. Like her father, Jeff Raven, or, more to the point, her grandmother, Isthia, who had waited until her forties to make use of powerful innate Talent.

It was no consolation to Damia that her mother, in a rare example of maternal solicitude, had warned her of this intense, feminine loneliness which she, too, had experienced.

But Jeff Raven had appeared to breach the Rowan's Tower and the Rowan had at least had Afra's company Afra! Why did her mind keep returning to him?

Damia realized that she was grinding her teeth. She forced herself through the rituals again, sternly making specific thought dissipate until her mind drifted. And, in the course of that aimless drifting, an aura impinged on her roving consciousness. Startled - for nothing could be coming in from that quarter of s.p.a.ce - she tightened her mind into a seeking channel.

An aura! A mere wisp of the presence of something.

Something. alien!

Alien! Damia recomposed herself. She disciplined her mind to a pure, clear, uncluttered shaft. She touched the aura. Recognition of her touch! Retreat - return!

The aura was undeniably alien, but so faint that she would have doubted its existence except that her finely trained mind was not given to error.

An exultation as hot as l.u.s.t caused her blood to pound in her ears. She was not wrong. The trace was there. And it wasn't Beetles!

Taking a deep breath, she directed an arrow-fine mental shout across the light-years, nadirward, to the Earth Prime Tower in the squat Blundell building which housed the administrative centre of Federated Teleport and Telepath.

I've caught something out here, Earth Prime!

Aurigae Prime, d.a.m.n it, control. Control, girl! Jeff replied, keeping his own mental roar within tolerable bounds.

Sony, but I'm aimed directly at you, Damia replied without real contrition. Her father was capable of deflecting her most powerful thrust.

Thank all the G.o.ds for that mercy. So what have you caught?

specify! His tone was official.

I can't be more specific. The alien aura is barely detectable, coming from four light-years galactic north-northeast, Sector 2.

I arrowed in once I heard the trace and it responded.

It responded? And four light-years out? Damia, where are you?