The indicator on the machine swung down from 176 to 151, and the dominating aural family shifted. The alien aura had gone.
“I hope your new host is in good condition, Dash,” Melody murmured. The Andromedan had not been sent home, of course; this little unit lacked the power for interstellar projection, let alone intergalactic. Melody had oriented it on a backward colony planet circling close to Etamin. She had ascertained from Yael’s mind that there was a prison colony there that operated very hot mines, where presumably a number of desperate entities lost their auras. The Andromedans would not be able to do much in that situation, but would be well cared for until more permanent arrangements could be made.
Now Skot of Kade stepped forward to assist the man out, while Melody fought again to control her emotions. She had done it; she had sent Dash away! She would probably never encounter him again, and that hurt, despite the chance it had given her galaxy. Had love passed her by a second time?
The Captain seemed dazed. “Sir,” Skot said. “You are free now. How do you feel?”
But the Captain slumped, unconscious; Skot barely stopped him from hitting the deck.
“We’d better get a doctor,” Skot said. “Something’s wrong.”
“No,” Melody said firmly. “Transfer is harmless to the host. It’s probably just the sudden release, and the shock of his physical injury. The only available doctors are in the lower ship, and we can’t afford to advertise to the crew what has happened here. We can’t even notify Imperial Outworld, because the hostages there could intercept the message and cause trouble for us. As far as Outworld is concerned, this ship is and always was completely loyal—and as far as Andromeda is concerned, it remains secretly hostage.”
“More hostages?” Llume inquired. Skot had survived by keeping his laser trained on Captain Dash, thus slowing the organization of the pursuit of Melody, until Melody’s victory had relieved him. But Llume’s unscathed escape seemed like an act of the God of Hosts; it had surprised and gratified Melody. She liked Llume, and was glad that the magnets had not been assigned to kill her.
“Bound to be more hostages, in this ship and in the fleet. We can’t possibly run every crewman through this machine. We’ll just have to let them function as they are. So long as they don’t know the situation in the officers’ section, they probably won’t be any trouble. It is a necessary and I think reasonable gamble.”
They ran the other hostages through the unit. “That may become a lively prison,” Melody remarked. “But I don’t think they’ll be able to get word to their home galaxy in time to change anything here, and they won’t dare risk contacting the hostages of Outworld for fear of exposing them.”
At last Tiala, the original hostage, came up. “No,” Melody said. “You can’t go quite yet. You were the bait that brought me here—and I compliment you on your performance. Because of you, the whole resistance program of Outworld was betrayed. Yet there was substance in your lure: we need the information that is in your mind.”
“No,” Tiala said, backing off. “I don’t know anything.”
“My dear, I cannot afford to trust you,” Melody said. Her recent experiences had made her a good deal more cynical. “The survival of my galaxy may depend on what I can glean from your mind.”
“Please… I will tell you everything I can,” Tiala pleaded. “Only don’t destroy me! Let me go with the others.”
“My dear, I am not going to destroy you. I am merely going to make you temporarily hostage, until I have what I require. Then I will return to my present host, and send you after your friends.”
“Don’t you understand?” Tiala cried. “Hostaging damages the host-mind! Look at your Captain and his officers! They can’t function. It will take months for them to recover, and some may die.”
Melody looked around dismayed. “Months?”
“When an aura is forced on an unprepared host it is like rape. Even when the transferee departs, that host is—”
“Months! How can they run this ship?”
“They can’t,” Tiala said. “You’ll have to let them rest and give them rehabilitation treatments until their facilities are restored. If you try to push them, you’ll only hurt them worse. And me… you don’t have hostaging equipment. If you overwhelm my aura, it will be much worse. I may never recover.”
Melody considered. Tiala’s aura, like Llume’s was very much like her own, and that created a natural affinity. She did not want to hurt the Andromedan. “I am not certain I can believe you.”
“Put me under torture! Compulsion drugs! Anything. But don’t destroy my aura!”
Melody was forced to take the girl seriously. As a hostage, she ought to know the effects of hostaging. The Andromedan effort had been more brutal than Melody had chosen to believe, but since these aliens were planning to destroy the entire galaxy, why should they care about the welfare of their hostage hosts? No need to save the mind of a creature who would shortly perish anyway.
“What is the secret of hostaging?” Melody asked.
“I do not know. We were told none of it so that we could never betray it. Even our allied Spheres don’t know the secret.”
“What Sphere does know it?”
“Sphere Dash. They discovered an Ancient site that they call Aposiopesis, one they had missed before, and there it was. There are many very good sites on their Imperial Planet, but they are very hard to penetrate safely. Perhaps Planet Dash was an Ancients’ military base or governing capital. So Dash has the secret, and the Council cooperates, because”—Tiala shrugged—“Andromeda needs the energy.”
“Sphere Dash,” Melody repeated thoughtfully. “It seems I sent the wrong aura away.”
Tiala smiled. “Yes. He is the only one who might know. He really is a captain 07 in Andromeda; had he succeeded here, he would have become an admiral.”
“A dashing captain,” Melody murmured with a brief smile. She could have been an admiral’s mate…
“And I,” Tiala continued. “I would have jumped rank to 06. Now I will settle gladly for my health.”
“Very well. Answer my questions honestly, and I will leave you that.”
“Then I would be traitor to my galaxy, and my Sphere of /.”
Melody glanced at her with annoyance. Did this alien think she could renege? “It seems you must choose between health and loyalty.”
“We have a convention in my Sphere,” Tiala said, and Melody was reminded that Andromeda was not organized into segments. Apparently they did not operate as efficiently as Milky Way species, so could not amalgamate into segments. If they had concentrated on efficient use of energy, instead of theft of it, they would have been better off. Was the entire Andromedan galaxy philosophically defective, that they could not perceive this basic truth?
But now she had, through her drift of thought, missed what Tiala was saying. “Would you restate that, please?” Melody asked.
“It is complex to outsiders,” Tiala said, mistaking the reason for Melody’s request. “It is a compromise between opposing loyalties, with honor. One must perform a certain degree of service, set by circumstance. This is known as the Lot of *.”
“I had understood your own Sphere was slash.”
“My Sphere is slash. But Andromeda has been effectively unified along Spherical lines for a thousand Solarian years, ever since the First War. We have to a considerable extent merged cultural conventions, at least on Imperial worlds. Sphere Slash has honored the Lot of * for many centuries.”