The Ship Who Sang

By contrast, Davo looked tired and thoughtful. He pushed immediately toward the sleeping accommodations and meshed himself into a bunk.

Prane hovered in front of Helva. "I want to thank you, very much, for putting aside your personal preferences to undertake this venture. Chief Railly has assured me that you will have the topmost priority when you return."

Helva did not have time to analyze why his words disturbed her, for the Orbital Station transmitted good luck and clearance. Chadress did the manual piloting, that was protocol, but Helva was so used to doing things herself it was hard to watch. Not that he was inept. Damn, damn, damn, she thought, glancing around the crowded cabin, wishing half her mind were busy on something routine, how had she let herself get talked into this?

The moment Chadress announced turnover and freefall, Prane called a rehearsal. First he put the five men who had joined the ship planetside through the staging they had missed. They'd all worked in freefall and they knew their roles. All they required was time to familiarize themselves with movements and the Nurse's voice issuing from the wall. Ansra, however, chose to be difficult about that. She undulated toward the director, whether to charm him or intimidate him was a question.

"Really, Prane, I can project any emotion required of any capable actress, but to pretend an. . . an abstract voice is Juliet's Nurse is the end. How can I play to a wall? And, how may I ask, can. . . Helva (it seemed to be difficult for Ansra to name her) acquire any ease in free-fall, when I understand she has never made any use of a body?"

"My stage directions are perfectly clear and are printed in my circuitry. Therefore I cannot make a mistake. That is, as long as you are where Juliet is supposed to be," Helva answered.

No one actually laughed aloud at the putdown. Ansra resumed her proper position, frowning, and chewing her lip.

However, her assertion that she could project any emotion required of any capable actress seemed to fall short of the mark in scenes with proper actors. Her Juliet remained wooden and inadequate. She did not take fire from Romeo's speeches, although how she could fail was beyond Helva's comprehension. The man was inspired. . . and inspiring.

Relieved now for many days of the press of gravity on his spongy bones, buoyed constantly by the success of every other aspect of this singular production, Prane exuded a vitality, an enthusiasm that was contagious. He was apparently indefatigable.

As he was setting scene iv of Act I, with himself, Mercutio, Benvolio and others doubling up as maskers and torchbearers, Mercutio finished his speech: "Come, we burn daylight, ho!"

The scene had been quick, bright exchanges, the lighthearted nonsense of friends bound for a gay evening.

Mercutio repeated his line. Hastily, Helva remembered she doubled as prompter and found the place.

"Nay, that's not so," she read out.

Silence met this attempt, so she, too, repeated the line.

"We know the line," Prane said as this additional pause lengthened conspicuously. "Who says it?"

Helva gulped. "You do."

For a moment a terrible expression haunted his eyes. Then he burst out laughing and the terror was gone. "Tis always the littlest line that escapes," and he briskly cued Mercutio.

That night, as everyone slept, Prane was restless. Shamelessly, Helva turned up the volume in the cabin he shared with five other men. He was repeating scene iv over and over. Then he lay silent. Helva thought he slept, until she saw his right hand slowly creep to his belt, carefully extract a small pill from the waistband fabric of his shipsuit. With a gesture counterfeiting a random sleepy movement, the pill reached his mouth.

The secretiveness of his action, added to the intense rehearsal of that scene, gave Helva a tragic insight to the Solar. He was an addict, in the most horrifying degree: mindtrap, listed as harmless in the galactic pharmacopoeia, had become poisonous to him, fatal to mind and body. And he knew it. Yet more devastating to Solar Prane was loss of memory and to prevent that, he courted self-destruction.

Except for Ansra, rehearsals proceeded well. How Prane kept his temper with such deliberate obstructionism, Helva did not know. Every scene the Solara played began to sag, lose fire, drop pace. But Prane did not react. And Ansra apparently gave up trying to goad him into an action no one could condone. She took to needling Kurla, a far more vulnerable personality.

Fortunately, Nia Tubb, the Lady Capulet, shared the pilot's cabin, which was the women's room. She was wise in the ways of human relations and if she said nothing to the point, she did buffer Kurla from Ansra's hostility. She also helped Kurla in her lines, kept up a lighthearted monologue when the women were alone. But even she could see Ansra's tactics increasing the pressure on the sensitive, anxious medical attendant. "Honey, you have any real trouble with Colmer, you let me help, huh?" Nia Tubb said to Kurla one morning.