I share so much with you, Kelly cried inwardly to the bowed head of the young man who served him. I’m as terrified of them as you are. Talk to me!

And once again his random ability to tap into the telepathic gift that lay dormant – but dangerous – in his borrowed mind stirred to life. The young man heard Kelly’s thoughts and jumped like a frog on an electric wire. The pale brown eyes fluttered nervously up to meet Kelly’s gaze. The servant placed his hands briefly over his ears and shook his head.

“But why?” asked Kelly aloud.

It was an effort to say the words, but the young man forced them out in a grating whisper. “You are trouble. Great trouble.”

He was gone, swallowed up by the clatter and steam of the kitchen.

“No, I’m in trouble. Big trouble,” said Kelly to the empty space left by the waiter’s precipitous retreat. With a sigh he lifted his spoon and began to eat.

There was an eddy of movement at the main door. Four guards, their bodies forming a protective square, sailed into the room. At their center, nestled like a precious jewel in a living setting, walked a lavishly overdressed Takisian. This one Kelly recognized – Ke’elaa, head of Vayawand security. Kelly couldn’t pull his gaze away from the martial parade. In that strange overworld where his uncontrollable telepathy periodically carried him, Kelly perceived Takisian thoughts as dancing rainbow colors. Now there was a swirling black storm eating at the edges of those oblivious colors. Kelly shook his head, trying to clear the weird feeling.

Then he realized: Blaise. Blaise was in this room. Someone had been jumped.

One of the guards hesitated, frowned, and looked back toward the soldier at the rear of the phalanx. But the reaction, the premonition of danger, came too late. The heavy pistol was out of its holster, the barrel jammed into the back of Ke’elaa’s head. Cooked brains and congealing blood were suddenly flying from the hole in what had been Ke’elaa’s face.

Reflexes Kelly hadn’t even known he possessed kicked in, and he took a low, long dive that carried him through the shuttering lens of the kitchen door. He came to rest against the lower legs of a waiter, who tottered, skittered, danced, to no avail. Food pattered down, a vegetable rain, followed by the mind-numbing sound of shattering china. It almost drowned out the screams, curses, and the snarl of weapons fire from the dining room. Self-preservation was still the paramount drive for Kelly. Crawling from beneath the half-stunned servant, Kelly surrendered to the urge that was pure Kelly Ann Jenkins. He howled like the teenage girl he really was. That need satisfied, he clutched the stump of his right arm against his chest and bolted.

The house was seething like a disturbed anthill. To Kelly’s fevered imagination, hours seemed to pass until he at last stumbled past Blaise and Durg serenely playing cards, and into the haven of his bedroom.

Pillow clutched desperately against his aching stomach, Kelly rocked backward and forward in an agony of fear and shock. Blaise sauntered in. There was a sated, well-fed feeling surrounding him. He sat on the edge of the bed and asked in a soft voice, “What’s wrong?”

“You know damn well what’s wrong. You killed Ke’elaa, and now everybody’s killing everybody out there.” His voice caught on a sob.

“It wasn’t me. These Takisians kill each other all the time.”

Kelly wanted to smash the hypocritical smile off his face. “I felt you.”

Blaise pushed back the sweat-matted bangs from Kelly’s forehead. “But you’re not going to tell anybody, are you?”

“No.”

“Then we haven’t got a problem. We’re no threat to anyone, simple little groundlings that we are.”

The bed shifted as Blaise removed his weight. He smiled down at Kelly. Walked out. And Kelly remembered how once, briefly, he had loved him.

Chapter Thirteen

Jay felt like a curmudgeon, but after only a few days he decided just one thing could be said for space travel – it was achingly, stultifyingly boring. At least on an airplane there was the occasional burst of turbulence, but the Milky Way was behaving with perfect gentility – not a single asteroid field to dodge, unknown space anomaly to elude, space pirate to defeat.

Tachyon’s face had been a study in disgust, amazement, and condescension when Jay had offered this opinion. “Asteroid fields? We’re light-years from the nearest system. And do you have any comprehension of how big space really is? As for pirates… we’re traveling with the closest thing to them.”

“Then I guess I’ll go looking for some captive princesses. Maybe they’ll be more appreciative than the humorless bitch I’m stuck guarding.

“I should hope Nesfa would have better taste!” Tach shot back.

Another problem with spaceships – you can’t slam the doors when you’re pissed. Jay grumbled to himself, Dumb-ass Takisian. Couldn’t she recognize sarcasm when she heard it? and went wandering again.

Tachyon had been sticking tight to the stateroom. Scared of Zabb, wary of Nesfa and her people. As for Zabb, he’d been notable only by his absence. Trips insisted that someone be with Tachyon all the time, and since Jay wanted to spend time with the amazing Nesfa, that put most of the burden on the hippie. Jay knew he was shirking, and that only added to his lousy mood.

As planned, he ran across Nesfa. She was hurrying down a corridor carrying a potted plant. It looked like attenuated bamboo, but of a startling purple hue. “I’m prettying the lounge. Come and help.”

“Sure.”

This was a new room for Jay. A few low sofas, a clear table. Multicolored lights crawled randomly through the piece. Jay couldn’t decide if it was the Network version of a lava lamp, or a video game. Nesfa crossed to a corner and deposited the purple bamboo. Then Jay spotted the most exciting feature yet – a port.

“Hot damn, the observation car” Jay laughed for the sheer relief of it. A weight of claustrophobia he hadn’t known he was carrying suddenly blew off his shoulders. “So how do we get a view?”

Nesfa’s white brow furrowed. Her hair swept forward, scanning the wall. She then crossed and pressed a section. The black rolled away, and Jay frowned as roiling gray, like dirty cotton wool being torn by hurricane winds, showed beyond the port.

“What the hell is this? No stars!” Jay yelped, feeling cheated.

“Of course there are no stars,” Tach snapped from the doorway. “We’re not in reality as you know it.” She was in one of those moods, her mouth drawn down, gray eyes dark with a secret pain.

Jay had never liked being lectured by Tachyon when the little shit was a man. Now the soft girl’s voice made it doubly hard to take – memories of a finger-wagging mother or sister.

“Gee, so sorry you finally decided to crawl out of your cave.”

“You… fight?” Nesfa asked hesitantly. Damn, the girl was quick, picking up human emotional nuances that well.

Mark stepped hurriedly in. “But, Doc, I could see stars when we were aboard Baby.”

“We weren’t traveling at light-speed, Mark.”

Why did Tachyon have that sharp tone only when she addressed him? Jay wondered. Talking with Mark she fairly cooed.

Tachyon continued, “That was just a little high-speed chase around the solar system.”

“Which you would never have won if my ’Cat hadn’t been damaged from our earlier encounter with the Swarm,” said Zabb conversationally from another doorway.

Mark’s hand was in his pocket. Jay was willing his to stay there. But the Takisian made no move even to enter the room, and Jay felt the hair on the back of his neck start to lie down again. There was something predatory in the way Zabb was eyeing Tachyon, and Jay began to think that maybe Meadows wasn’t totally paranoid. Maybe this smiling man really did intend to kill Tachyon.