The third morning, as Damia sat in the control tower, she worked' with such haste Afra reprimanded her. She corrected herself, gaily, making far too light of her mistake, and then, eagerly, she propelled herself out toward the rendezvous. When she returned that evening so tired that she reeled into the living room, Afra took command.

"I'm going with you tomorrow, Damia," he said firmly.

"What for?" She sat bolt upright to glare at him.

"You forget that I have a direct order from Earth Prime to check the aura of these aliens. You've no way of knowing this isn't a reinvasion by the same entities that attacked Deneb twenty years ago."

"Sodan said they'd had no previous contact with any sentients," she said, half angry.

"Sodan?"

"That is how he identifies himself," she said with smug complacency. She lay back on the couch, smiling up at Afra.

It disturbed him to know that this entity had a name. It made the alien seem too human. Nor could Afra quite reason away the tenderness with which Damia spoke that name.

"Good enough," Afra said, with an indifference he didn't feel. "However, you don't need to introduce me formally. All I need is to check on the aura. I'll know in an instant if there's any familiarity. I won't jeopardize his confidence in your touch. He'll never know I've been there." Afra yawned.

"Why are you tired?"

"I've been stevedoring all day," he said with a malicious grin.

The remark had the desired effect of infuriating Damia. The very fact that he could so easily divert her conclusively proved to Afra that her emotions were unhealthily involved. It no longer mattered whether this Sodan was of the race that Jeff and the Rowan had fought. He was a menace in himself.

Somehow Afra got through the evening without a hint of his inner absorption spilling over. Damia, reliving the success of her day, wasn't listening to anything but her own thoughts.

The next day, after the necessary work was completed, Damia and Afra both took to their personal capsules. Afra followed Damia's thrust and held himself silently as she reached the area where she could touch the aura of Sodan. Damia then linked Afra and carried his mind to the alien ship. As soon as the alien touch impinged on Afra's awareness, much was suddenly clear to him: much seen, and worse, much unseen.

What Damia could not, would not, or did not see justified Afra's nagging presentiment of danger. Nothing out of Sedan's mind was visible: and nothing beyond his public mind was touchable. The alien had a very powerful brain. As a quiescent eavesdropper, Afra could not probe, but he widened his own sensitivity to its limit and the impressions he received were as unreassuring as his increasingly stronger intuition of disaster.

It was patent that this Sodan was not of the previous invasion species: that he had been traveling for an unspecifiable length of time far in excess of two Earth decades.

It would not occur to Damia that Afra would linger once he had established his facts. But Afra did linger, discovering other disturbing things. Sedan's mind, undeniably brilliant, was nevertheless augmented. Afra couldn't perceive whether Sodan was the focus for other minds on the ship or in gestalt with the ship's power source. Straining to his limit without revealing himself, Afra tried to pierce the visual screen or, at least, the aural one. All he received was a low stereo babble of mechanical activity, and the bum of heavy elements.

Defeated, Afra withdrew, leaving Sodan and Damia to exchange thoughts that he had to admit were the ploys of courtship. He returned to Auriga and lay in the Tower couch, summoning up the energy to call. Jeff Raven had moved young Larak nearer to Auriga to facilitate sub-rosa communications. It was not, Afra assured himself, that Damia had deliberately hidden anything in her reports to himself or to Jeff: she was unaware that her usually keen perceptions were fuddled and distorted by her emotional involvement:^ she who had prided herself on her ability to assess dispassionately any emotionally charged incident.

Larak, Afra called, drawing heavily on the gestalt and projecting his own mental/physical concept of Larak to aid him in reaching the mind.

Man, you're beat, Larak came back, sharp, clear green.

Larak, relay back to Jeff that this Sodan…

It's got a name?

It's got more than that and Damia is responding on a very high emotional level, Afra sighed heavily. Relay back to Jeff that I want him and the Rowan to remain on call at all times to me. I consider this an emergency. Get yourself, pushed out here as soon as you can relay that message. I'll need you here so we can get through to Prime when we need to without going through Station or Damia.

Coming, Larak responded crisply.

Afra leaned back in the couch and flicked off the generators, thanking the paradox that allowed Damia to run a Station on low T ratings; she would be unable to catch what he had just transmitted.

He would have given much to have been able to handle the Sodan mind by himself, without having to call on other Primes. All through Damia's life, Afra had been able to cope with her mercurial tempers and to direct her restless energies. And though his recent complete withdrawal from her had been painfully calculated, it meant that now he could neither further his cause, nor divert Damia from her headlong immersion in romance. Nor was he able to challenge Sodan and remove that competition.

"Galloping gronites, you look like a rough ride on a long ellipse comet," was Larak's cheery greeting as he bounced into the Tower.

"Your description is remarkably apt," Afra replied grimly, and gripped Larak's shoulder to convey the one impression he had not included in the broadcast.

Love has touched our fair sister at last, huW. Larak murmured sympathetically. And with a total alien.

A very dangerous alien, unfortunately, Afra added. "There is fissionable material aboard, mighty heavy stuff for a ship bound on an ostensibly peaceful exploratory mission. Heavy enough to suspect whoever gave Sodan his mission knew our civilization is on an advanced level."

"More's the pity," Larak agreed thoughtfully, perching on the edge of the console. "Could you sense any communications with his own people?"

"Tremendous power source in the ship. Tremendous, but by the mighty atom, Larak, you can't get past the public mind. Anyhow, I couldn't. And Damia hasn't." Afra rose, paced restlessly back and forth in the narrow Tower.

"Then it's possible he has informed them of the contact?"

"I can't tell."

Larak held Afra's glance, and then sighed.

"It'll be a shame to have to destroy him," he said slowly.

"Ha! We'll be lucky if we can," Afra replied. "Oh, yes, Larak, that mind is the equal, if not the superior, of Damia's. It could destroy… all of us."

"Then we must act quickly before any suspicion leaks to Damia," Larak said in sudden resolution.

Together the two flicked on the generators and soberly presented to Jeff and the Rowan the action they deemed advisable.

But are we sure the evasions are deliberate? Maybe this alien is exercising caution? I would if I met a mind in outer space, the Rowan said in argument. She met absolute resistance to her position. Why can't we destroy him then? Why must we ask her to do it? She spoke as Damia's mother, not Callisto Prime.

For one thing, we can't reach that far without her. Nor can we draw, as Damia can, without prearrangement on other Talent reserves, Jeff replied. We'll have to show her how dangerous Sodan is, he added, disliking this as much as any of them.

Each day Damia returns to Auriga a little more tired than the previous one, Afra said slowly. I suspect that he realized he must drain her before she suspects his intentions.

Playing with her? The Rowan was angry now.