The Ship Who Sang

"I don't have time to report, you nardy fool. The release word!" Helva snarled. She jumped her voice an octave and a half, switching registers to helden-tenor, her phrase ringing through the plaza in an arrow of sheer emotion, packed sound to pierce the trance of her scout.

Kira's guards were lurching now, half-dazed by the treacherous fumes that filled the plaza. They had Kira by the arms, and Helva, trapped in the background of the mighty chorus, couldn't tell whether they were restraining Kira or hanging onto her for support. The girl alone was unaffected by the hallucinogen.

"Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die!"

Helva's tenor rang, scornfully, lashing viciously at Kira's deathwish.

"You fool," Cencom said. "She wants to die!"

"GIVE ME THE RELEASE WORD!" Helva cried at the tight beam in a strident soprano, then projected her voice, bitterly powerful, angrily compelling, thundering the protest:

"Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die!"

The phrase echoed tauntingly through the plaza. The chorus, unable to imitate the incredible pitch of Helva's voice, dropped to the lower octave. The challenge rocked back across the plaza, punctuated by the massive thunder of erupting volcanoes.

With a sudden, soundless, soul-shattering wrench, the massed glimpses of chaos dissolved and Helva was suddenly of single sight, Kira!, in a darkly curtained chamber, unevenly lit by red braziers. Increasing her dark vision, Helva penetrated the gloom, her attention focused on the hideous object that dominated the room.

On a raised, black basaltic slab lay the decomposing remains of what had once been a man. The teeth were bared whitely through the decayed flesh in a travesty of a smile. The tendons of the neck were stark ridges and the cartilage of his esophagus ended in the indestructible fabric of a scout coverall. His hands, crossed on the chest cavity crumpled by a massive fatal blow, were linked by the intertwined overgrowth of fingernail. The 732's dead brawn lay in state.

And Helva was seeing him through Kira's contact button. . . at last.

A wailing chant filled the chamber, a meaningless, mournful dribble of sound, emanating from the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The mad brain encased in its indestructible titanium shell, had all circuits open, keening, oblivious to everything.

In as soundless a whisper as she could broadcast, Helva muttered swiftly to Kara. "It's the rogue 732. It's gone mad. It's got to be destroyed." It was easier, somehow for Helva, knowing what she must do, to think of the 732 as an impersonal 'it', rather than the female the brain had once been.

Kira swayed, making no reply.

For one paralyzing demisecond, Helva wondered if the girl had inadvertently opened the contact, if Kira were still in the thrall of the powerful death wish. Had Helva's Dylan protest pierced Kira's self-destructive trance with its mockery? Had Helva succeeded in jolting her brawn to sanity? The release word would be no mortal use if she did not have her mobile brawn's cooperation to immobilize the rogue.

With slow steps Kira approached the bier and its ghastly occupant. The keening grew louder, the mumbling became articulated.

"He has been taken. He Who Orders has been taken," chanted the 732 and the crowd echoed the chant as readily as they had Helva's. "He is gone. Seber is gone."

Not helpless again? Helva cried, silently, her mind overwhelmed by hopelessness.

Eerily another sound was superimposed over the 732's wail.

"Now that dwarf presents a definite problem, Lia," the wowwing, muffled words could barely be distinguished. "I wouldn't be surprised. . ."

It was a man's voice, Helva realized, played back at a lagging speed which distorted the words into a yawing parody. The ship was broadcasting, had broadcast this tape so many times that the sound of Seber's taped voice was as decayed as his corpse on the bier.

Kira continued to sway in her graceful circumnavigation.

"Speak, O Seber, in singing tones that thy servant, Kira, may hear the music of thy beloved voice," Kira crooned, making an obeisance to the column behind which lay the shell of the mad 732.

Helva barely managed to suppress the cry of intolerable relief at the cues Kira was feeding her.

"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.