Get off the Unicorn

"The emissions were favorable," Helva and the Manager agreed in chorus.

"Who are you now? Helva?" he demanded, swinging from one to the other, confusion making his tendrils rigid.

"I am Helva, here," she said, fighting with the desire to remain Helva for his sake and the need to remain Corvikan enough to control precarious excitations.

"Let's find out about the others and leave."

"I have," Helva said.

"Did you not feel that thermal group near you?" asked the Manager of Niall, shading to ochre neutrality.

"He had not previously encountered their dominances, Manager."

The Manager assumed more color and then, bleeding a little blue, he disappeared.

"You .did have a chance to speak to Prane and—"

"I encountered them in one of the thermal groups. I'll tell you later when we're back on the ship."

"Then the mission's completed?" The triumph in Niall's tone colored his shell a brilliant orange-red and he pressed toward her eagerly.

From behind a frond, first one, then another Corvikan appeared, but Helva was diverted from their arrival by Niall's rapidly changing color.

"We cannot combine!" she cried, and tried to keep her distance from him.

One of the Corviki brushed against her, pushing her back toward Niall.

"Don't play the professional virgin with me now, Helva!" His furiously human response was emphasized by the fiery glow of his shell as every particle became excited. The Corviki who had pushed her was now throwing power toward Niall, exciting him further. It flashed through Helva's awareness on two levels that the Corviki was familiar to her. She'd no time to identify it; she had to avoid Niall.

"You don't understand! Don't, Nialll We've got to get back to the ship!"

"Helva!"

"It's not safe for us. The energy levels are too hot… Integrity will be violated and—"

The outer edge of his shell touched hers. Sane thought, Corvikan or human, was impossible. Explosively they began to excite one another, each level in her seeking its equal in him, slowing, speeding, delicately adjusting, seeking the merger that would be the imposition of one pattern over the other, all levels matched, all energies mutual, all…

Other thermal groups were attracted by the emissions, attracted and held, transferring power so that Helva felt her Corvikan envelope engorge to incredible dimensions, giving her unlimited mass to energize at an even higher excitation level. Faster the particular forces spun, faster, to match speeds, to combine, neutronic shifts of dazzling force…

Fission… an incredible stoking of the available energy… the atmosphere splitting with thunder as immeasurable positive forces began to recombine…

Distance was where she was, some black, sensedeprived consciousness, some tiny flicker of ego, lost, lost, lost. Unwilling to resume. A slow return to awareness. Exhaustion, death-deep in an overstressed mind. A shuddering violent release to fall with an endless spinning grace into unawareness, comforting and kind.

Offensive odor, acrid, strong, staining the lungs, reviving the senses that must escape that burden.

To be aware and wish for deprivation! How strange!

Reality came into focus. And, sadly, identity.

Niall's body was sprawled by the console, the helmet upturned on the deck, his grasping hand a scant inch from it. His shipsuit was dark and damp with stain. Though he seemed motionless, she never questioned that he lived. She knew that, knew it as deeply as she knew her own vitality, low as it was.

It was comforting to look at him: the fatigue-lined face unguarded and boy-young, the dark hair tousled, the wiry body limp. Soon he would rouse and then that dear form would change, would vary and not be wholly hers.

No… Helva hesitated. No, an intangible difference impinged on her growing awareness. She was not wholly herself. There was a subtle alteration.

Curious, she began to explore her ship self. The critical difference was not in her systems or hull. She had full command of every area.

The steady vibration of power in her idling drive, however, resonated at a new frequency.

A long groan was wrenched from her, reverberating in the cabin and down the quiet corridors, humming through the deck plates to rouse Niall.

The c-v drive was functioning. Beta Corvi! Helva's mind reeled, fighting to deny/accept the experience that surged back over her in a tsunami of emotions, abrading stunned sensibilities.

Niall crawled on his hands and knees, staggered to his feet, swaying as he took the two steps to the pilot's chair.

But they were here. They had been…

She hadn't the energy to transfer back. She hadn't the strength to tell Niall, who wouldn't have been strong enough to pick up the dislodged helmet anyway.

Instinct marshaled a response. She must break this disaster orbit, flee from Beta Corvi. Strange the Corvikans were silent. Humans must interdict that system to prevent the unwary from ever encountering those devastating sentients. Some progress was too costly in terms of human emotions. Who'd suggested that? She'd remember later. Right now, instinct and conditioning prevailed. She had to escape. She began to compute a flight pattern, and stopped. The ship was not in orbit around an invidious planet. They were drifting in space, far from the light of Beta Corvi.