Lady Lure (11 page)

“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 an 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.”

“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?”

“The repairs … are suitable.” Rolli continued
to speak in an oddly hesitant way. “The anomaly lies in…a recently
inserted program.”

“Do you mean the information implanted by the
Chief Hierarch’s technicians?” Perri cried, horrified by the
possibility Rolli had just suggested. “If that program isn’t
working properly, you may not be able to pilot the
Space
Dragon
any longer. Without the new program, you will revert to
a nurse companion.”

“Admiral Halvo is … an excellent pilot. If
required, he can take over for me. Ah,” Rolli said, the spherical
head moving back and forth on its metal neck, “the malfunction has
repaired itself. Apparently, it was only a minor glitch.”

“When you are in space, there is no such
thing as a minor glitch.” Halvo regarded the robot with questioning
eyes. “Tell me about the new programming you were given back on
Regula.”

“The Chief Hierarch assured me it was only
knowledge that would enable Rolli to pilot the
Space
Dragon,”
Perri said.

“Don’t you know by now that you cannot trust
anything that man told you? I want to hear everything he said to
you on the subject, Perri, and all you know, too, Rolli, about what
was done to you.”

It did not take long, only a few sentences,
because, in truth, they had not been given much information.

“I intend no insult to either of you,” Halvo
said when they were finished, “but I think I ought to take over as
sole pilot until we have landed safely. Perri, change seats with
me.”

Perri would have protested, preferring to
leave the ship under control of a robot that was bound to have a
reaction time quicker than that of a man who was not in the best of
health. But when she turned to Rolli she saw that the eyelights
were no longer blinking. If they had been real eyes, Perri would
have said they were staring at the navigator’s screen without
seeing it. Furthermore, the robot was slowly wheeling backward,
away from the control panel. When Rolli spoke again, the robot’s
metallic voice took on a strained quality and an urgency that Perri
had never heard in it before. She began to rise from her seat as
Halvo had ordered, but her attention was on her robot.

“Admiral.” Rolli continued to move away from
the controls. “Immediate action … is required.”

“Explain.” Halvo shoved Perri out of the way,
putting himself between her and Rolli.

“Search …circuitry,” Rolli said in that
strange, new voice. “I regret… have only now become aware …Use
great caution …Pern’s life …primary programming …Protect Perri at
all costs.”

“Rolli!” Perri cried, trying to get past
Halvo’s firmly planted form. “Rolli, what’s wrong with you?”

“Stay away from it.” Halvo pushed Perri down
into her seat again before he advanced to the robot, which was
standing next to the exit hatch. Rolli fumbled at the exit button
with one metal hand.

Perri knew perfectly well that Rolli never
fumbled. The robot’s fingers were deft at every task. If she had
seen or heard no other evidence of malfunction, Rolli’s awkwardness
would have alerted her.