Lady Lure

by Speer, Flora

  “I acted out of self-interest, Rolli. Perri and I need your skills if we are to survive. No thanks are necessary, but if you are offering them, you ought to include Perri, too. She helped me.”

  “I do not doubt her ability to rise to such an occasion.” Rolli’s head swiveled in Pern’s direction. She sat in the navigator’s chair looking remarkably dejected considering the success she and Halvo had achieved in getting Rolli working again.

  “I want Perri to learn to pilot the Space Dragon,” Halvo said, sounding as if he expected to hear an objection from Rolli.

  “An excellent idea,” Rolli said. “It would be an added safety factor if all three of us were able to pilot the ship. Shall we begin at once? Perri, if you will stand directly behind me, I will explain the control panel to you. I believe you have already memorized most of it since I answered the questions you put to me during our voyage to intercept the Krontar”

  “No.” Perri rose from her seat, but she did not move toward the main control panel. “Later, perhaps. Please, Halvo, I can’t do this right now.”

  “You ought to rest for a while,” Halvo said, hearing the strained note in her voice.

  “I am a bit tired.” A lone tear trickled down Perri’s soft cheek. She fled the cockpit, heading toward her own cabin.

  “I do not believe she is ill,” Rolli said.

  “Not in the way you mean. Not physically ill,” Halvo said. “I have seen similar reactions in young Service personnel under my command. Excitement and a determination to prove themselves can carry them through the worst pre-battle tension. They set aside their very natural fears and any doubts they have about the rightness of what they are doing. Then, once the action is over, they often lapse into depression or guilt, as Perri is doing now. The reaction is always strongest when the battle has ended badly and there is no triumph to buoy their spirits.”

  “I comprehend the problem,” Rolli said. “Abducting you was an act entirely foreign to Perri’s nature. She undertook the mission only to save Elyr. To foreswear her beliefs about right behavior, to give up such a vital part of her own value system in order to help another, then to meet betrayal from that other, could only result in emotional devastation.”

  “You do understand.” Halvo gave the robot a close look, but there was nothing to see except the smooth metal head and the steadily blinking eyelights. Certainly, there had been no emotion in Rolli’s voice. There could not be. Robots did not feel emotions.

  “I was originally programmed to conform my circuitry to Perri’s needs and to her thought patterns,” Rolli said. “It takes no great leap of logic to discern that she is suffering a severe reaction to unbearable stress.”

  “I would call that an accurate diagnosis,” Halvo said.

  “Perhaps it would help if you talked to her, if you explained to her the psychological implications of what has occurred in the same way in which you have just explained them to me.”

  “I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” Halvo said.

  “You must offer counseling to junior officers under your command when they are distressed as Perri is now. Why not do the same for her?”

  “The truth is, Rolli, I am having a bit of trouble with my own feelings toward Perri.”

  “If you express your resentment directly to her, will it not become easier for the two of you to work out your differences? Should we encounter further dangers, it will be necessary for you to work together in harmony to alleviate any resulting crisis.”

  Halvo could not tell the robot that, far from feeling resentment toward Perri for abducting him, he was suffering from a nearly uncontrollable desire for her. It was more than sheer lust, it was a vibrant longing for the most intimate kind of communion. Halvo had known many women on many worlds. Never before had he been so passionately drawn to a female that he had difficulty in thinking about anything else but her. As honest in his own way as Perri was in hers, Halvo knew what a joining with her would mean. He could not take Perri and then walk away from her. If he made love to her, it would be love in truth, and they would be bound together forever after.

  While he could see a great many benefits to himself from such an arrangement, he did not think it would be fair to Perri. He was much older than she, and his life experiences were entirely different. Perri, released from the Regulan subjugation of females, ought to be free to pursue her own life in any way she wished.

  All of his reasoning assumed that Perri wanted Halvo as much as he wanted her. He could not be sure that she did.

  “Damnation,” Halvo muttered to himself. “I don’t know how to handle this.”

  “While your reluctance to intrude upon Perri’s privacy is commendable,” Rolli said, “she does need a friend.”

  “I thought you were her best friend,” Halvo said.

  “The differences between a metal robot and a human being are obvious, Admiral. You yourself have previously pointed out some of them to me. I do not have a soft lap, nor would I offer sugar cakes indiscriminately.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” Halvo said, “I would accuse you of having a sense of humor.”

  “I am merely stating the obvious, which may, of course, appear to be humorous to the human mind.” Rolli paused as if to let that statement sink in and then said, “Perri has a liking for heskay tea. She finds it comforting.”

  “Is that the vile-smelling stuff she drinks with every meal?”

  “It is programmed into the food processor,” Rolli said, “which has been fully functional for the last thirteen-and-one-half minutes. You should have no difficulty in obtaining a hot beverage from it.”

  With a chuckle, Halvo rose, pleased to note that his physical condition appeared to be improving. He was able to get out of the copilot’s seat with neither pain nor vertigo.

  “Heskay tea and straightforward logic. Now I know how you keep Perri under your thumb,” he said to the robot. “I must remember your methods.”

  “Thumbs?” Rolli asked. “Precisely speaking, I do not have thumbs in the human sense. I am merely equipped with five jointed digits at the ends of metal arms.”

  “Right. And you don’t have a fondness for Perri integrated into your main circuitry either.” With one of his own hands about to descend on Rolli’s square metal shoulder in a gesture of comradely affection, Halvo stopped himself just in time. Rolli did not appear to notice either the motion of Halvo’s hand or the muttered oath with which he turned away from the control panels and left the cockpit.

  Hot heskay tea was a thick orange brew with a fetid odor that threatened to turn Halvo’s stomach. Holding a mug of it he left the galley and headed toward Perri’s cabin.

  The interior sliding doors were not functioning. All of them were wide open. This was one of the ship’s systems that would require further repair work once they located a safe landing place. Thus, Halvo was able to walk right into Perri’s cabin. She was curled up on the bunk, her knees drawn almost to her chin and her eyes closed. Setting the tea mug down on the shelf beside the bunk, Halvo sat next to Perri. He stroked her glowing hair gently, letting his fingers tangle into the thick waves while he reflected that it was a good thing he could not close and seal the door and be alone with her.

  Perri’s eyes opened, but she lay unmoving while Halvo’s hand slipped through her hair over and over again. Finally, she stretched, turning onto her back. Catching Halvo’s hand, she held it against her cheek.

  “I do not want you to think I am feeling sorry for myself,” she said. “I have only been thinking about what has happened and trying to make my peace with it.”

  “I know how difficult that is. It can break your heart to learn that the people to whom you have devoted your life set your value so low.”

  “You brought me tea.” Dropping his hand, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Halvo put the mug into her hands and she sipped appreciatively.

  “I don’t know how you can drink it,” he said, grimacing at the smell of it.

  “It is a
n indulgence left from my childhood. My mother used to prepare it for me. I shall probably never outgrow my taste for it. However, a fondness for heskay tea is all I ought to retain from my youth. It is clear to me that I must discover a new way to live.”

  She looked so downcast that Halvo took the chance of spilling the disgusting tea on himself. He put his arms around her. Perri nestled against him so easily that Halvo knew he was risking far more than a dousing with hot, smelly tea. He was about to lose his self-control.

  Perri was small, warm, and beautifully rounded. Her hair flowed over his arms, strands of it catching in his hands. Halvo rested his cheek on the silky red curls and, for just a few moments, he gave himself up to sweet desire. His hands molded her shoulders, then wandered downward to the small of her back and farther, to trace the feminine curves of her hips.

  “Halvo.” She leaned away from him. Her eyes were wide, her rosy lips softly parted. The hand holding her mug of tea trembled slightly. “I am not sure you ought to touch me like that. It makes me feel most peculiar.”

  “Touching you has the same effect on me.” He took the mug from her unresisting fingers, stowing it safely on the shelf. Then he put both arms around her and kissed her hard.

  She did not protest. Her hands slid up his chest and around his neck, and her lips opened at once to Halvo’s thrusting tongue. The interior of her mouth was as smooth and every bit as hot as the richest Demarian cream. Halvo did not even mind the faint, lingering taste of heskay tea on her tongue. Perri moaned softly, pressing closer to him, and Halvo’s senses spiraled into a mad clamor, demanding instant gratification.

  He could feel her breasts crushed against his chest and he longed to caress them. He wanted to see her nipples standing up hard when he touched them. He stroked her thighs and ached to feel them opening beneath him.

  Halvo realized that he was standing. He had drawn Perri upward from her bunk because he instinctively knew what would happen if he lay down beside her. He would not be able to stop himself from taking what he so desperately wanted.

  Frantically, he told himself that Perri was too young for him, too innocent. She was emotionally wounded at the moment and therefore incapable of making a rational decision as to whether she really did want him or not – as if desire as intense as theirs could ever be rational! Lastly, and far from an unimportant matter to Halvo, was the fact that they could enjoy no privacy.

  The mental image of Perri and himself naked on her bunk, with Rolli appearing in the open cabin doorway to observe them from those calm, blinking blue eyelights, was what gave Halvo the strength to set his hands upon Perri’s shoulders and hold her away from him.

  “Don’t you want me?” she whispered, her face flushed, her lips bruised by his passionate kisses.

  “We have more important things to do than roll around together on your bunk,” he said. He saw her face close into the tight, expressionless mask she had shown to him on their first meeting, and he almost cried out with grief and longing for the softer, sweeter Perri he had just deliberately banished with his own harsh words. But Halvo had not become an admiral by giving way to unseemly emotions at the wrong times.

  “I did not come to your cabin to make love to you,” he said through set teeth.

  “Didn’t you?” Her emerald eyes were altogether too brilliant. Halvo was certain she was trying not to cry.

  “I just wanted to reassure you that you may begin your piloting lessons whenever you feel ready.”

  “How kind of you. If you don’t mind, Admiral, I would prefer to be alone for a while. It is why I retired to my cabin in the first place.”

  She sounded as if she would like to kill him, which was just as well. If she had wept or tried to touch him, Halvo wasn’t sure he could have resisted her in spite of all the sensible reasons for self-restraint that he rehearsed in his mind over and over again on his way back to the cockpit.

  “Did Perri drink her tea?” Rolli asked when Halvo slid into the copilot’s seat.

  “Yes.” To Halvo’s surprise, the robot did not turn its eyelights upon him after that terse response.

  “She is not ill then?”

  “Perri is going to be just fine.” Halvo resisted the impulse to smash his fist down on the control panel, or into the robot’s smooth, metal face. “Perri is a survivor. I am the one who may not live through the next few days.”

  Chapter Seven

  “What we are searching for,” Rolli said, reiterating the conclusions reached during a long discussion of their situation, “is a planet or a large asteroid with an atmosphere acceptable to human physiology. As you have previously noted, Admiral, a place with a friendly, technologically advanced civilization would be the ideal, but if necessary, we can make the required repairs ourselves so long as conditions permit us to work outside the ship and take our time about it.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t locate any suitable planets in this sector.” Halvo was acting as navigator and he was making one of the periodic tests he and Rolli had instituted as soon as the ship’s instruments were operating again. “I can’t swear to the accuracy of the findings on these sensors, but there does appear to be a definite lack of inhabited, or habitable, territory in this area of space.”

  “We still don’t know exactly where we are,” Perri said. She was ensconced in the copilot’s chair while Rolli provided her with continuing instructions on how to handle the Space Dragon.

  “Which is one more reason why we need to set down as soon as possible,” Rolli said. “If we stray toward the edge of the galaxy or into the Empty Sector, we could find ourselves in serious trouble. In its present condition, the Space Dragon will not be capable of withstanding renewed physical stress.”

  “All of which means,” Halvo said, “that we are going to have to settle for something less than our ideal. I have just found a planet orbiting a small yellow star.” Halvo worked the buttons on the navigator’s panel, bringing the image of a rocky, barren-looking world onto the small screen in front of him.

  “Turn your circuitry loose on this image, Rolli, and tell us what your conclusions are. I have seen places like that one before, and I have even walked on a few of them. That little world will be blazing hot during the daylight hours and unbearably cold at night. I mean that literally. Such planets are intolerable to humans except for a short time after sunrise and again after sunset.”

  “Then, this planet you have just discovered cannot be of any use to us.” Perri pointed at the navigator’s screen. “What do those symbols mean?”

  Rolli answered her, responding as her finger moved from symbol to symbol, explaining patiently as always. “A thin atmosphere. On the uppermost hillsides a human could not breathe. At lower levels, where the air pressure increases, the atmosphere is marginally acceptable, but a space suit will be necessary for outside work. In deep ravines or caves, it should be possible to remove a space suit and still survive.”

  “This symbol indicates the presence of water molecules,” Halvo said, taking up the explanation. “The ship’s computer doesn’t tell us whether it is in frozen or liquid state, but from the other data I would say that on the planet’s surface it would have to be frozen and confined to places where the sun never shines. Otherwise, it would melt and boil away during the hot daytimes.”

  “I concur,” Rolli said, and went on to explain the other symbols displayed on the navigator’s screen.

  Perri stared at the small screen, attempting to combine the image and the symbols in her mind so she could make sense of what she beheld. In the last 18 hours she had learned a lot about the Space Dragon and the way its various systems functioned. Rolli and Halvo had answered every one of her questions. Neither the man nor the robot had so much as hinted that a mere woman had no right to know how a spaceship operated.

  As a result of their tutoring Perri understood why the food processor had once again stopped functioning, though understanding did not make her less hungry. She also knew she was cold because the air in the ship which
, fortunately, was still safe to breathe, was no longer being heated adequately. Halvo and Rolli had explained a series of system breakdowns to her. Taken individually, the problems were minor. Added together, they were making the Space Dragon an increasingly unpleasant place to be. Ultimately, Halvo had warned her, the ship would become a dangerous environment. Still, to one who was not experienced in space travel, the familiar ship represented security, while everything in the vast blackness outside it was threatening.

  “That planet doesn’t look like a very hospitable place,” Perri said. “Can’t we explore a little farther? Is our situation really so desperate?”

  “At the moment, we are not in dire straits,” Halvo answered, “but in another day or two we will be, and we have no guarantee of finding a better spot. If Rolli agrees, I vote for a landing on that planet.” He paused, looking toward Rolli, but the robot was taking longer than usual to process the data on the screen.

  “Rolli?” Halvo said. “Do you have any reservations about that planet?”

  “No, Admiral,” Rolli said slowly. “The planet shown on the screen would appear to offer the best opportunity for survival that we have yet encountered.”

  “Then, this planet it is.” Halvo began to call up landing information from the navigator’s panel.

  Alerted by a strange clicking sound from Rolli, Perri spun around in her seat to look at her robot. The clicking sound continued, and Rolli’s eyelights were blinking much more slowly than usual.

  “What’s wrong?” Perri asked.

  “I am dealing with … an insignificant…malfunction,” Rolli said.

  “I thought you were processing information too slowly,” Halvo said. Having finished with the ship’s computer for the moment, he also turned his full attention to the robot. “Has something happened to the repairs we made? Shall I take you apart again and recheck the connections on those fibers?”